Description
Artist: Ed Ruscha
Title: Sin-Without
Medium: Lithograph on Wove Paper
Size: Sheet 26 3/4" x 46" ; Framed 29 1/2" x 49"
Edition: X/60
Inscription: Signed, dated, and numbered on bottom
Year: 2002
Condition: Very good Quality overall with no visible flaws, as it would have left the studio
Documentation: Gallery certificate of authenticity
Ed Ruscha is an American visual artist associated with the Pop Art movement. Ruscha is known for his photographic books and tongue-in-cheek artworks. He often pairs witty and enigmatic text with deadpan renditions of landscapes and Hollywood logos and icons. His work finds inspiration from the ironies and idiosyncrasies experienced while living in Los Angeles.
Ruscha’s images serve as a commentary on American Romanticism and commercial culture. Additionally, they embrace his interest in graphic arts and the incorporation of text within urban and Western landscapes. His photo-collages, paintings, and drawings embrace colloquial and consumerist words. Though his art style has Pop Art sensibility, he defies the category through his diverse input and use of unusual materials such as fruit and vegetable juices, grass stains, gunpowder, blood, and even Pepto Bismol.
Sin-Without embraces Ruscha’s method of converting popular culture imagery into cinematic and typographical codes. The lithograph shows the simple word, sin, on top of a photograph of the sun shining through clouds. The careful placement of the letters on the heavenly skyscape and varying sizes is ironic. Furthermore, the work alludes to the ideas of language deteriorating and the universal cliches found in pop culture.
Sin-Without has been on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art. The lithograph is signed, dated, and numbered on the bottom and comes with a gallery certificate of authenticity.
About Ed Ruscha:
Fascinated by the homogenous geometry of the American urban landscape, Ed Ruscha has built one of the most distinctive bodies of work in the history of 20th-century art. Frequently associated with the Pop Art movement or Conceptual art, Ruscha’s work is impossible to categorize, as it taps into all of the major artistic and philosophical movements of its time while retaining a completely original message. The individuality of his art is reflected within his idiosyncratic aesthetic, based on the banal Californian cityscape, cultural cliches, and deterioration of language, rounded with the sharp usage of typography and innovative painting materials such as gunpowder, blood or Pepto Bismol.
Although he has always seen himself primarily as a painter, Ruscha has created a significant body of work in photography and printmaking. His photography books from the 1960s and 1970s are today considered paramount artistic commentaries on the cinematic and popular culture of the time. His most influential photographic volume “Twentysix Gasoline Stations” from 1962 encapsulates all of the vital elements of his style, from geometry and utilitarianism of the architecture to consumerist and peculiar elements of the Los Angeles cityscape. He also specialized in etching, lithography, and screenprinting, creating numerous series of multiples over time. Permeating every media without losing a shred of its power, Ruscha’s visual language was lauded for its clarity and depth. “Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head,” he said at one point, explaining both the choices for his accessible visuals and profoundly symbolic and contemplative concept.
Due to his unique style and great influence, Ed Ruscha has become a favorite among collectors. His works make part of many private collections worldwide and are included in the UBA Art Collection and the collections of LACMA, SFMOMA and The Broad Museum. His photographs and multiples are considered highly desirable items both in auction rooms and galleries.
Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Ed Ruscha moved to California in the 1950s pursuing education. He is based in Culver City, a part of Los Angeles.