Edward Ruscha

Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles
Private Collection, West Coast (acquired in 1962)
Christie's,  Los Angeles, June 7, 2000, Lot 59
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

Los Angeles, The Ferus Gallery, Edward Ruscha, May 1963
Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art; Rome, Museo Nazionale Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo; Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Ed Ruscha, March 2004 - January 2005

Richard Polsky, "Polsky's Pick: Ed Ruscha-Buy/Hold/Sell," Art + Auction, Summer 2000, p. 49
Richard Marshall, Ed Ruscha, London, 2003, p. 23, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. The texture is rich and the surface is clean and stable. The paper support is affixed to the mounting board. There are original pinholes observable in each of the four corners. There is no apparent restoration evident under UV light examination.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Both iconic and laconic, Ed Ruscha's signature text paintings reveal the artist's fascination with language and in the present example, a coincident engagement with the products of American consumer culture. In 1961, Ruscha would flee the drudgery of an advertising job he despised for the museums of Europe. Here, the young artist would promptly discover an affinity with the sensibilities of compatriots like Johns and Rauschenberg, rather than with the formal, ossified traditions of the European masters. While Ruscha's works would become progressively slick over the years, his early paintings like Honk boast a luscious texture and materiality that recalls the agitated, highly-worked encaustic surfaces of Johns.

 

Executed in 1962, the same year that Warhol would display his Campbell's Soup Cans at The Ferus Gallery, the present work affirms Ruscha's engagement with the language of Pop. In its iconography, it also bears a strong similarity to Actual Size (1962) in which Ruscha depicts a can of Spam, the mother of all convenience foods, blasting galactically across the space of the canvas. In explaining its significance, Ruscha confesses a fascination with its seductive, graphic appeal, "It was only the can and not the contents that inspired me. The word Spam...and the sausage-shaped letters I thought were beautiful together with that scary yellow." (Carolyn Wyman quoting Ed Ruscha, Spam: A Biography, New York, 1999.) Similarly Honk (Cracker Jack) glorifies another icon of commercial culture, specifically one whose packaging and brand identity resound with all-Americaness: baseball, middle-class values, and all things quaint and wholesome. Works like Honk and its variants evince Ruscha's predilection for terse, monosyllabic utterances that define his life in L.A.. As the artist explains, "My paintings do come out of an American sensibility, out of urban frustrations which are characteristic of where I live."