Ed Ruscha
Cash For Tools 2
2014

About the Item

TECHNICAL INFORMATION: Ed Ruscha Cash For Tools 2, from Rusty Signs 2014 Mixograph on handmade paper 24 x 24 in. Edition of 50 Pencil signed, dated and numbered Accompanied with COA by Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art. Condition: This work is in excellent condition. Frame: This work is framed in a white shadow box frame that shows all the margins of the work. ABOUT THE WORK: Cash For Tools 2 is part of the Rusty Signs, a series in which Ruscha uses words, that he considers as neglected and forgotten signs from neglected and forgotten landscapes. These Rusty Signs are reproduced in uncanny detail that blurs the line between the fictitious and the real. This artwork, as well as the whole series, is further expression of a consistent theme that runs throughout his work: the passage of time. We are confronted with the physical effect of time upon them, a blunt reminder of its inescapability, even on steel. Once again filtered through the language of common American objects, these prints appear to be rusted signs that read DEAD END, CASH FOR TOOLS, and FOR SALE 17 ACRES. Ruscha has chosen to produce multiple variations of these signs, giving the impression that they have been weathered by time in varying ways, as if they came from different locations or were subjected to a different set of circumstances. For example there are two versions of Cash For Tools and this Cash For Tools 2 is more ruined and consumed than Cash For Tools 1. Some have gunshots and some are missing sections, while others appear to have acquired thick layers of rust and grime. In this way, each piece of the series seems to contain an independent story, their histories having literally formed their present state. The Rusty Signs series also marks a transformation of some of Ruscha’s aesthetic concerns; having painted and photographed signs and signage throughout his career, works such as Cash For Tools 2 signify the first time in which he is not merely representing the image of the sign, but actually recreating the sign itself. We no longer see a fictionalized representation but we actually see the sign itself, and its physicality is a part of its essence. At the same time, having been removed from context, they still share the sense of disconnection that permeates in many of his depictions of signs. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Edward Ruscha has remained an important figure in American art since the early 1960's when his artwork first came to the fore as part of the West Coast Pop Art movement. Since that time, he has continued to develop his signature style, which combines words and images on the same visual field. By doing so, visual and verbal means of communication coexist and create a sense of friction. The words conjure mental images that do not necessarily describe what the eye actually sees in the painting. A painter, printmaker, and filmmaker, Edward Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937, and lived some 15 years in Oklahoma City before moving permanently to Los Angeles where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 through 1960. By the early sixties he was well known for his paintings, collages, and printmaking, and for his association with the Ferus Gallery group, which also included artists Robert Irwin, Edward Moses, Ken Price, and Edward Kienholz. He later achieved recognition for his paintings incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement.   Ruscha has a talent for making the banal seem significant. He often reduces his subject to the minimum amount of detail needed for identification. Places and structures are often depicted as shadows. Ruscha is interested in language, and how that language can describe but not depict space. Words have been present in many of Ruscha's paintings, often occupying the whole canvas. What they say is always clear. but what they mean is more ambiguous. A major retrospective of Ruscha’s career opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. in June 2000 and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Miami Art Museum, and the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, TX. In 2001 Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters as a member of the Department of Art. Ruscha's work has been exhibited internationally for three decades and is represented in major museum collections. Among his other public commissions are a mural commissioned for the Miami-Dade Public Library, Miami, Florida (1985 and 1989); and for the Great Hall of the Denver Central Library, Colorado (1994-95). Ruscha is represented in Los Angeles by Gagosian Gallery and in New York by Leo Castelli Gallery. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited an Ed Ruscha drawing retrospective, Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha. At the invitation of the U.S Department of State, four distinguished American museums recommended noted American artist Ed Ruscha to represent the United States at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The group consisted of the directors and curatorial representatives of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Ruscha nominated Linda Norden, the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, to serve as curator of his exhibition. The U.S. Department of State approved these recommendations.

Creator:
Ed Ruscha (1937, American)
Creation Year:
2014
Dimensions:
Height: 27 in (68.58 cm)Width: 27 in (68.58 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
Medium:
Mixed Media,Paper
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
2010-
Condition:
This work is in excellent condition.
Gallery Location:
Miami, FL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU53831683483
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Ed Ruscha

Indisputably one of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century, Ed Ruscha has built a formidable body of work by staking a claim on the deceptively simple intersection of text and image, superimposing elliptical phrases (or, often, single words) over West Coast landscapes to create prints and paintings that can be read instantaneously yet evade easy understanding.

Alongside artists like Robert Irwin and Billy Al Bengston, Ruscha was a pioneer of the 1960s Los Angeles art scene as part of the famed Ferus Gallery. His embrace of Hollywood vernacular and the open Western road have tied him as closely to the identity of L.A. art as Jackson Pollock is to that of New York.

Coming to California in 1956 at the age of 18, Ruscha intended to become a commercial painter but found himself drawn to fine art, over time being shaped by three galvanizing influences: Marcel Duchamp, Pop art and the movies.

Meeting Duchamp when the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum) hosted the French Conceptual artist's first U.S. show, Ruscha was especially affected by his use of "readymade" objects and imagery, rendered unfamiliar through unexpected titles or text. Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup can paintings, meanwhile, were shown for the first time at the Ferus Gallery in 1962, opening up new vistas for Ruscha. Movies, then, provided another inspiration through their use of title cards, placing graphic text over filmic shots — The End, for instance — for maximum impact.

Ruscha began his famous series of word paintings in the 1960s, depicting various views of the Hollywood sign and the logos of studios like 20th Century Fox, but also roadside views like the Standard Oil stations dotting L.A.'s freeways. Over time these became more abstracted, pinning ambiguous, free-floating phrases (Wall Rockets is a famous example) to natural vistas, scenes of highways, or monochrome backgrounds. Beginning in about 1980, the artist began using a sharp font he designed himself, called Boy Scout Utility Modern.

A master printmaker who also works across the mediums of books, drawing, photography and even film — in 2009 he starred in a movie directed by the artist Doug Aitken — Ruscha has been an influence on a staggering array of artists, including Stephen Shore, Christopher Wool and Anselm Kiefer.

Ruscha's work has been featured in dozens of exhibitions around the world, including "Ed Ruscha: 50 Years of Painting" at London's Hayward Gallery (2009), "Ed Ruscha: Made in Los Angeles" at Madrid's Reina Sofia in 2002, a 2000 retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, a survey of his works-on-paper at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1998, and a 1982 retrospective that traveled to the Whitney Museum. In 2005 he represented the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale, and in 2009 he received a National Arts Award.

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