Ed Ruscha

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Richard and Barbara Lane, New York
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Seoul
Sotheby's, London, June 22, 2005, lot 47
Private Collection, London
Christie's, London, October 14, 2007, lot 25
Seomi Gallery, Seoul
Private Collection, Tokyo
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen; Barcelona, Fundació Caixa de Pensions; London, Serpentine Gallery; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Edward Ruscha, December 1989 - February 1991, cat. no. 31, p. 54 (Paris), p. 81 (Rotterdam), p. 103 (Barcelona), illustrated in color

Robert Dean, ed., Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings Volume Three: 1983-1987, New York, 2007, cat. no. P1987.04, pp. 266-267, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges. There are some light and scattered accretions and a few small abrasions at top center and bottom towards the left side. Framed.
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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Ed Ruscha’s monochromatic painting, Averages (1987), depicts a vaguely suburban scene. Set against a charcoal sky, three simple house shapes rise from the ground, loomed over by sprawling tree branches. Out of focus, non-descript, and darkly rendered, Ruscha’s otherwise benign landscape becomes somehow sinister. Floating inexplicably over the image are nine bright-white bars of various lengths. Occupying the center of the painting’s frame and rendered far more sharply than the hazy background, these white vertical bands seem to gesture towards the visual language of infographics and information—though there is no indication given as to what these lengths of white may aim to represent.

Throughout his prolific career, Ruscha has focused on the interplay between word and image. Influenced by advertising, fascinated by typography, and enthralled by the world around him, Ruscha has used paint, graphite, photographs, commercially printed books, film, and more experimental materials, like gunpowder, to create works with pop appeal and sardonic punch. A pioneer of photo-based conceptualism, Ruscha’s book projects like Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), or Various Small Fires and Milk (1970) use snapshots and simple linguistic phrases, paired together to categorize and account for the world around us. Shaped by his work in a print studio as a young man, Ruscha’s works convey a fascination with not only the meaning but also the look of language. This fixation on typography is reflected in his “word paintings,” like Lisp (1968), in which the word takes on a body and personality of its own, the visuality of the letters merging almost onomatopoetically with its sound and meaning. At times tongue-and-cheek, Ruscha’s focus on the junctures between image and language have been vastly influential for many contemporary artists.

In the mid-1980s, Ruscha began a series of dark, monochromatic paintings focusing on American domestic landscapes. Shown at the Berkeley Art Museum in 1990, the Silhouette Series abandoned Ruscha’s signature mixture of word and image. As Berkeley’s curator, Larry Rinder, wrote at the time of the exhibition, “[The series is] based on the ostensibly banal theme of the modern American home. In much the same way that Ruscha once elevated everyday language to numinous heights, in these works he transforms the common suburban tract dwelling into an iconic image suffused with psychic intensity.” Using the blank spaces—spaces ready for words yet containing none—Ruscha underscores the “hollowness and anonymity” of the contemporary suburban landscapes that he depicts. Language absent but implied leaves these images open for meaning, or perhaps devoid of it.