Tag Archives: mustsee

Work of the Week! WOW! Ellsworth Kelly – Red, Yellow, Blue

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Ellsworth Kelly
Red Yellow Blue
1999-2000
Lithograph
31 x 30 1/2 in.
Edition of 40
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

Ellsworth Kelly’s works emphasize the basics of color, form, and shape. He is considered one of the great American artists of the 20th century for his pioneering works in hard-edge minimalism and colorful abstraction that explored the essence of their subjects.

Kelly spent time in Paris in the late 40s where he became influenced by Picasso and Matisse. Upon his return to New York, he carved out his own niche, paring down architecture, images and other visuals, turning them into abstractions. Using basic colors, he created statements that were “less descriptive than evocative.” Compared to other artists of his generation, Kelly’s works are far simpler.

His works take time to look at because what they portray is reduced to the basics, but they are all depictions of something we have already seen, and Kelly invites us to see what he sees.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Red Yellow Blue.

Red Yellow Blue is based on a painting created in 1963 which is part of the Marguerite and Amié Maeght Foundation collection. The Galerie Maeght was an avid supporter of Kelly’s work, giving him his first solo exhibition in 1958. The artist spent the summer of 1963 with the Maeght family at their residence in Saint-Paul de Vence and Red Yellow Blue is inspired from his walks in the flower and vegetable gardens of the estate. The colors are reduced to the three primary colors, flatly applied without any nuance or value. Once the subject of the work is identified, it is easy to see that the work is a bird’s eye view of a well-manicured French garden.

WOW! – Work of the Week – John Baldessari – Zorro (Two Gestures and One Mark)

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John Baldessari
Zorro (Two gestures One Mark)
1998
Offset lithograph with screenprint and offset flip book
Sheet: 10 x 8 in.
Book: 3 7/8 x 5 7/8 in.
Edition of 60
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

John Baldessari pledged, in a 1970 groundbreaking work “I will not make anymore boring art.” This pledge was addressed to both his viewers but also to himself. He has remained true to his word, never shying away from new media, allowing his works to always retain a freshness and relevance that many younger artists struggle to match. Through his experimentations, he became responsible for the way many artists use appropriation in their work today. Kruger, Sherman and Salle are among the many that cite him as an influence. He is a giant of contemporary art.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Baldessari’s Zorro (Two Gestures and One Mark).

Zorro (Two Gestures and One Mark) is a lithograph with screenprinting accompanied by an artist flip book without commentary. The combination of the two brings to life trademark Hollywood imagery.

Baldessari is best known for works that blend photographic materials which are taken out of their original context and rearranged. He has spent his entire life living and working in California so it is not surprising that much of his works incorporate Hollywood film stills and other cinematic references. This particular piece features actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Humphrey Bogart and the character Zorro.

This work requires the participation of the viewer, to take the book and flip it, which in turn reanimates the gestures of Humphrey Bogart and Jean-Paul Belmondo from movie stills. It is not a static piece.

The end result of flipping through the book is the actual artwork of art in which we see the imagery of Belmondo smoking a cigarette, and rubbing his lips with his thumb, Humphrey Bogart laughing before slowly becoming serious, and Zorro marking the Z on a wall with his sword.

Thus the work becomes two-part. The genius of the work is that it is a combination of film stills that the viewer has to flip through the book to get to the end result image, which is the artwork itself. A remarkably smart conceptual piece!

WOW! – Work of the Week – Frank Stella – Jasper’s Dilemma

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Frank Stella
Jasper’s Dilemma, from Jasper’s Dilemma
1973
Offset Lithograph
16 x 22 in.
Edition of 100
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

Frank Stella defiantly departed from Abstract Expressionism through a complete restructuring of the idea of painting. He revolutionized the field and inspired changes still felt today.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Stella’s Jasper’s Dilemma, an homage to fellow artist Jasper Johns who he admired greatly.

Jasper’s Dilemma is formed of two “mitered” mazes as Stella called them. Mitered joints are joints that are beveled, usually at a 45 degree angle to form a corner, such as standard picture frame edges. Both mazes seem identical in structure, divided into 4 triangles whose points don’t quite meet at the center, however, the colored maze spirals outward in a counter-clockwise path from the center and the black, while the black and white maze follows a clockwise route.

Stella eliminated subjectivity in his work through using arbitrary mathematical measurements, forcing the viewer to think about the relationship between color and form. Johns on the other hand, created compositions of recognizable items, closing the gap between the object and its representation, transforming an object into art.

Johns would often create a work in color, then reexamine it in shades of grey. This “dilemma” is posed in Stella’s tributary work (which holds both the representation in color and in grey), between the “seduction of the spectrum against the rigors of the grey scale.” The title of this work and its color scheme make explicit reference to Johns’s statement that the more he worked in color, the more he saw gray.

For Johns, the use of grey was a means to think about color through its absence. Johns initially used grey tones as a statement of skepticism or anticipation, but it evolved into a profound examination of the meaning of color itself. Grey was the most appropriate hue with which to present “conceptual” art since it is less stimulating, allowing for more space for ideas.

In removing color, the artists refocus the viewer’s attention to consider the means of representation, over what is represented and, to consider how does something come to have meaning, rather than what does it mean.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Jeff Koons – Balloon Animals

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Jeff Koons
Balloon Animals – Swan, Monkey & Rabbit
2017
Porcelain with metallic finish
Dimensions vary, see below
Edition of 999
Signed and numbered on bottom of each piece
$100,000 for the set of 3
Swan 8 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 6 3/8 in.
Monkey 9 7/8 x 15 3/8 x 8 1/4 in.
Rabbit 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.

About the work:

Jeff Koons has cemented his position as the heir of the Pop Art movement by creating works that play with banal and familiar objects from our everyday lives through industrial methods. Koons’ reproductions of balloon animals are amongst some of his most recognizable pieces. The works reflect an element of childhood play and disposable culture but in an art-form meant to last.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Koons’ set of three porcelain, metallic finished Balloon Animals – the Swan, the Bunny and the Monkey.

Koons’ ballon animals tap into our memories and our emotions, in the eerily familiar and trustworhty form of a party favor. They are a symbol of our youth and they toy with our inner child’s fascination with a structure that is temporary. The emotional reaction that many of us have to an object that reminds us so vividly of the magic and charm of childhood is palpable, yet these are objects that one would never think of as a work of art.

Like his idol Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons has mastered the practice of taking a concept or idea and transforming it. Koons’ works are conceptual, and while they may prove challenging to grasp, they have definite aesthetic qualities and are subjected to intense attention to detail.

The balloon animals are intrinsically optimistic works. They remind the viewer of a birthday party or a clown, but to the artist they are also representative of life. As a viewer, we obviously observe the outermost elements of a work, yet, there is an interior to the work, a void full of air. To Koons, the interior of the piece is important, because it is just like the inflatable balloon animals of our youth, neither can exist without the air forming the interior element. It also symbolizes us individually, since as living beings we inhale air. To Koons, the act of inhaling air is life.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Andy Warhol – Dollar Sign FS II.278

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Andy Warhol
Dollar Sign FS II.278
1982
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board
19 5/8 x 15 5/8 in.
Edition of 60 unique works
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

Power, Greed, Wealth, Success, Strength, Capitalism, Consumerism, Materialism; what symbol represents all these better than the US $ (Dollar Sign)?

“It’s all about the Benjamins!!!”

This weeks Work Of the Week (WOW!) is Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign ($), FS II 278. When it comes to a symbol of a world currency, none is more iconic the the US $ (Dollar Sign). No one thinks of the British Pound, the Euro, or the Yen. It is the US Dollar, and the dollar sign $, that is known and desired all over the world.

Art is always a extension and representation of the times. Andy Warhol began creating money imagery as early as the 1950’s. After WWII, America had solidified her position, strength, and power in the world. Here at home, America was entering the most financially sound period in her short history. Americans were experiencing a modern industrial revolution in manufacturing, home buying was at the highest level in history, television was new and advertisements were pitching the latest and greatest to a ripe audience, who for the first time had money to buy, and the growing middle class was the strongest it has ever been. American was flying high, and money was flowing.

The pop artists saw this, and their art reflected exactly what was going on. Jasper Johns’ American flag was an artistic symbol of patriotism. Robert Rauschenberg’s photo-journalistic style artistically documented the times, and Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol used their advertising backgrounds to create art that represented the influx of money, capitalism, consumerism that the American culture was experiencing at the time.

Yet it is timeless, just as it rang true over 50 years ago, it holds true today. Warhol’s Dollar Sign ($), is not just a cool image that was meant to hang behind the desk of some important CEO. It’s a statement. It’s an abstract statement, or concept if you will, on what money represents, and how this tiny piece of paper rules the world, (for better or for worse). Abstract in the sense that Warhol does not come right out and list the positives and negatives of money, he leaves that up to the viewer to form his or her own interpretations. To some who see the genius of Warhol it may seem deeper that what is looks like on the surface, and to some it may seem simple or obvious. But after all, Warhol’s take on Pop Art is in many ways, overstating the obvious.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Fulvio Bianconi – Pezzato Vase, Model 1329

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Fulvio Bianconi
Pezzato Vase, Parigi, Model 1329
c. 1951
Polychrome patchwork glass
5 w x 4 1/2 d x 9 1/2 h in.
Signed Venini Italia to underside

About the work:

Fulvio Bianconi is one of the most important designers that generated the “Renaissance” of Venetian Murano glass-blowing art in the 20th century.

Bianconi was an innovator, focusing on pieces with sophisticated shapes, characterized by strong colors, designing striking works, some of which sum up the enthusiasm of the “fabulous” Fifties that would become icons of Murano glassmaking. He was the first glassmaker to portray human figures in glass, breaking with the long-held tradition of glass being perceived as a secondary material as far as artistic expression goes.

In 1946 he travelled many times to Murano to learn more about the art of glassmaking. Here he met Paolo Venini who, invited him to collaborate with his glassworks. From this collaboration the Figure della Commedia dell’Arte, the Tiepolos the Fazzoletto, the Sirene, the Pezzati and many others emerged.

New workmanship techniques of the glassmaking art and revision of the age-old ones were the subject of the creative research of Fulvio Bianconi. Molding movement and color into his glass pieces, Fulvio Bianconi established a totally up-to-date link with the history of Murano.

Before his innovations, glass had been used for utilitarian purposes. Bianconi pushed the limits of glassmaking in the traditional sense and material of glass itself by transforming it in both theory and practice. In his more than sixty years of artistic activity, he designed thousands of books, produced innumerous illustrations and paintings, and designed and created thousands of glass objects.

Bianconi was free to experiment with the formal qualities and potentials of glass as a fluid and organic medium. His earliest freelance work for Venini, which he not only designed but also cut and ground himself in order to become familiar with the medium, engages in a spontaneous aesthetic that intentionally and ironically protests against traditional values of perfect craftsmanship.

Fulvio Bianconi was one of the only glass designers who adapted trends in contemporary art into his work. There is an immediacy and flamboyancy in his aesthetic achieved through an improvised and freehand manipulation of glass while in the furnace. Rather than engage in the tradition of perfect repetition that had so long denoted artisanal excellence, Bianconi instead injected the individuality and expressivity of the artist’s hand into his glasswork designs. “The artistic glass,” wrote Bianconi, “must be unique, if it is repeated it loses its charm”. Though his idiosyncratic designs oftentimes brought him into direct conflict with the more restrained sensibilities of master Muranese glassworkers, it is exactly this freedom from traditional constraints that would lead Bianconi’s designs to have such a lasting influence.

An initial love for color and tendency towards abstraction would characterize the direction of Bianconi’s further creative evolution in the realm of glasswork. As he gained increasing confidence in his value as a designer, Bianconi reveled in the medium’s expressive potentials, and began to wholeheartedly utilize the luminosity of glass to develop intensely colorful displays that are almost painterly. Indeed, while form is always an essential part of Bianconi’s design, it is most often color that comes to the forefront as the true subject of his work.

This is particularly true of this week’s Work Of the Week (WOW!), which focuses on the Pezzato series, designed in 1950 and first displayed in the 1951 Triennale.

The Term “Pezzati” means spotted or patched, here, irregular patchworks of colored tesserae (small pieces of glass that form mosaics) are fused together to decorate and form the wall of the irregularly formed vase, in a seeming reference to both the theatricality of the harlequin’s outfit and Paul Klee’s work of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

This was a difficult technique, as each color has different properties, and they all have to be worked so that they get along with each other. To produce these Pezzati, the tesserae were first obtained from a cane flattened into a tape and cold-cut, and then arranged in a mosaic pattern on a fire stone. Once in the oven the effect of the heat welds the tesserae together forming a glass pattern, which then encloses into a cylinder shape to be worked into the final form, by blowing and hot-modeling.

For the Pezzati, Bianconi generally opted for unusual forms with flattened cross-sections, which were particularly irregular and characterized by soft lines, sometimes interrupted by constrictions and protrusions.

The Pezzati were proposed in 5 chromatic combinations, identified by the names of cities or continents: Paris, America, Stockholm, Istanbul and Venice. This Work Of the Week (WOW!) is from the Paris (Parigi) color scheme, composed of red, blue, green and clear tesserae. It is a prime example of Bianoni’s interest in color – bold and strong but calibrated. It also reveals his curiosity and innovative skills as well and his playful creative nature.

Fulvio Bianconi is a name well known to collectors of fine Italian glass. He designed many of the most important and original pieces associated with the mid 20th century Murano Italian glass, and the Pezzato pieces are among his most striking and sought after.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Damien Hirst – Ala-Met

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Damein Hirst
Ala-Met
2011
Woodcut
31 1/2 x 25 in.
Edition of 55
Pencil signed and numbered

About the work:

“To create that structure, to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour.”

Damien Hirst started his ‘Pharmaceutical’ spot painting series in 1986, when he painted two almost identical arrangements of colored spots on the wall of his warehouse. Today, the spot works are amongst his most widely recognized pieces.

The spot series follows a formula. Every work is created without any physical evidence of human intervention, appearing to be constructed mechanically. Each color is unique, never repeated and complimentary to the surrounding ones. The formula of the spot paintings also dictates that the spaces between the spots are always equal to the diameter of the spots themselves. Hirst explains that, “mathematically, with the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally important thing in any kind of art. Which is the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format.”

The titles for the works also follow a specification, and are taken from the chemical company Sigma-Aldrich’s catalogue ‘Biochemicals for Research and Diagnostic Reagents.’

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Ala-Met.

The name for Ala-Met is derived from two amino acids, Alanine and Methionine, organic compounds that participate in a number of processes such as neurotransmitter transport and biosynthesis.

Although created in the deceptively simple polk-dot motif, the work is hypnotic and disorienting, inducing the sort of hazy effects one might get from powerful mind and body altering pharmaceutical substances. Some colors seem to jump out from the white background, while others recede, highlighting Hirst’s expert control of color.

Ala-Met is also faithful to the mechanical and detached appearance of the spot paintings, despite that it is a work created by woodcut. The woodcut is a relief printing technique, in which a block of wood is carved along the woodgrain. This technique typically leaves woodgrain marks on the printed product, whereas Ala-Met achieves a uniform and seamless finish in each spot.

Throughout his body of work, Hirst has demonstrated a fascination with mortality. His work calls into question our awareness and convictions about the boundaries that separate desire and fear, life and death, reason and faith, love and hate. Hirst uses the tools and iconography of science and religion, creating works of art whose beauty and intensity offer the viewer insight into art that transcends our familiar understanding of those domains.

The spot paintings, with their titles tied to the pharmaceutical industry play on the fact that we have become a drug induced society, yet at the same time these paintings speak volumes about the art itself, as a work of art. Hirst’s work is post expressionism. “I wanted to find a way to use colour in paintings that wasn’t expressionism.” However Hirst does use color and the placement of these colors to express certain ideas or emotions. Each spot painting will have a different meaning or feeling to each viewer coming from different cultures, with a whole different set of life experiences.

Damien Hirst has often been a polarizing figure in the art world. His often provokes outrage as well as mystified shrugs. In addition to keeping up with the Warholian tradition of repetitive, consistent images, the spot artworks bring up cultural and contemporary questions. Upon seeing these spot paintings, the lay person will ask “Is that art?” or “That painting cost that much for spots?” This was also said about Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can paintings. Time has proven the importance of the Campbell’s Soup Can painting to the art world, as will Hirst’s Spot paintings.

“WOW! – Work of the Week – Jesus Rafael Soto – Screenprints A, B, C & D from the Jai-Alai Series

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Jesus Rafael Soto
Screenprints A, B, C & D from the Jai-Alai Series
1969
Screenprint on Perspex
24 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. each
Edition of 300
Signed and numbered, etched in perspex

Jésus Rafael Soto was a defining figure of both the Optical Art and Kinetic Sculpture movements. He was an acclaimed artist in his native Venezuela, having graduated from the Escuela de Bellas Artes y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas, and moved to Paris after the Second World War to undertake research in constructivist art. He participated in a groundbreaking exhibit at the Denise René Gallery in Paris called Le Mouvement. René’s guiding principle was that art must invent new paths in order to exist. And Soto’s art does just that.

He explored the phenomenological effects between two-dimensional and three-dimensional planes, fully engaging his viewers from every angle. He was a master at removing all subjectivity linked to personal taste, employing strictly geometric forms, squares, straight lines and primary colors, with a focus on the depiction of relationships between and movement of objects, rather than the objects themselves.

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Soto’s Screenprints A, B, C & D from the Jai-Alai Series

The series takes its title from a sport in which the players and the ball remain in continuous motion, involving the ball to bounce off a walled space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held device called a cesta. This continual movement transforms the relationship between space and time and are characteristics of the series that Soto explored in a conscious way. In naming the series Jai-Alai, the artist is allowing the viewer to understand his artistic research, by identifying the source. Just as in the process of observing the sport firsthand, each and every vantage point is equally as valid as it is important, and Soto has translated these distinct views into the artwork. The game does not occur from a single lens or fixed point of view, and neither does the art. It requires a process of moving through multiple states of time and space.

Working with flat lines of color and abstract geometric form, the artist stimulates optical effect through the manipulation of color theory and the dynamic between background and foreground, turing the viewer into a spectator from many different angles.

As one of the most intriguing artistic minds of his day, Jésus Rafael Soto’s quest for aesthetic representation of the immaterial, rejection of the figurative and use of traditional geometric form resulted in not only a career marked with ingenuity and success, but also of a wholly fresh and interactive experience for the viewer of his kinetic works.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Keith Haring – Fertility #2

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Keith Haring
Fertility #2
1983
Silkscreen
42 x 50 in.
Edition of 100
Pencil signed, dated and numbered

Throughout his work, Keith Haring was never afraid to confront the socio-political challenges of his time. He was an outspoken and ardent activist against racism, homophobia, the apartheid in South Africa and AIDS.

Despite that Haring addressed difficult topics in his work, he always approached these subjects with high energy and optimism. He was heavily influenced by graffiti writers and street art in New York City, and created what would become his signature style, composed of the heavy use of line drawing, vivid colors, and simplified humanoid and geometric forms. These glyphs that could be read, like an urban, tribal language were accessible to all, and easy to take in by a wide audience.

“Art is something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.”

This week’s Work of the Week! WOW! is Keith Haring’s Fertility #2.

Fertility #2 is the second work in the Fertility Suite of 5 works. Created in day-glow pigments, the piece is exceptionally bright, which conveys a warm and happy message, and evokes the New York club scene that Keith Haring was a part of.

It is a work that captures both the mysteries of ancient civilization with the representation of the pyramid, but also the imagination of extra-terrestrial civilizations through the flying saucers. The pyramid was a common theme in Haring’s work, simultaneously referring to antiquity and symbolizing eternity. It is also connected to the hieroglyphic language that Haring employs throughout his body of work, and the notion that images are a universal language. The UFO on the other hand represents a cosmic energy and suggests supernatural forces or people who were situated outside of social norms. They always symbolize positive energy and empowerment.

Lines and circles have a darker connotation in Haring’s work, they refer to the lesions of HIV and AIDS victims. These threats are surrounding a pregnant woman who is in distress, agitating her arms, trying to get attention.   

Combined, what does all this imagery stand for?

In the 1980’s there was a high prevalence of HIV infection among pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was a terrible epidemic that devastated vast regions. The 1980’s were characterized by an insufficient response (both in the US and abroad) by government leaders in response to the AIDS epidemic. Ronald Reagan, the US president at the time, did not address the issue until over 21,000 Americans had already perished from the virus. Haring was a staunch activist and leader in promoting awareness about the virus and Fertility #2 is a centerpiece in his fight in relation to the transmission of the virus from mother to child, a particularly common problem in southern Africa.

The lesions, or dashes and circles have infected all the land in his depiction of the African landscape, and the pregnant mother is terrified for her unborn child. Keith Haring, loved the hope and innocence of children inspired. To him, they represented a better humanity: color-blind, unprejudiced and caring, uncorrupted by greed and hatred towards others. This work represents the saving of children and human kind from the evils of illness and inactive leadership.

WOW! – Work of the Week – Ed Rushca – Bliss Bucket

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Ed Ruscha
Bliss Bucket
2010
Lithograph
28 3/4 x 28 in.
Edition of 50
Pencil signed, dated and numbered
About the work:
One of the most important postwar artists, Ed Ruscha came into prominence during the 1960s pop art movement. First recognized for his associations to graphic design and commercial art, Ruscha became admired for his mediations on word and image, where a word literally becomes an object.
Language has often invaded the visual arts during the past century, but no other artist uses it the way Ruscha does. His early paintings are not pictures of words but words treated as visual constructs. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again,” he once said. “I see myself working with two things that don’t even ask to understand each other.”
This weeks WORK OF THE WEEK – WOW!!! is Bliss Bucket, a snowcapped mountain scene, bearing the words, with his self invented font.
Since the late 1990s the mountain has become one of Ruscha’s most consistent motifs. He produces classic mountains, taken either from images of the Himalayas or from his own imagination.
Ruscha has said, ‘It’s not a celebration of nature. I’m not trying to show beauty. The concept came to me as a logical extension of the landscapes that I’ve been painting for a while – horizontal landscapes, flatlands, the landscape I grew up in. Mountains like this were only ever a dream to me; they meant Canada or Colorado. I’m not really painting mountains, but an idea of mountains. picturing some kind of unobtainable bliss or glory … tall, dangerous, beautiful.”
He has used these epic backdrops to support a range of ambiguous or bland phrases such as this one here. The deliberately neutral typeface in this work has now become his trademark font, with squared off letters recalling those in the Hollywood sign. He describes it as ‘no-style’ or Boy Scout Utility Modern’
Actually, the words aren’t so much written on top of the depiction of the mountain as inscribed within the work, the crisp lettering clear, clean and as virgin as the snow itself. Each word has the momentous authority of an alp; they shout, as though to start an avalanche.
Ruscha would stumble upon these words, considering them to be his own version of Duchampian readymades. When the words began to invade his mountain paintings the result was boldly striking and beautifully absurd. The mountains receded to the background while statements such as BLISS BUCKET threw themselves at the front of the plane with big, look-at-me lettering making it impossible not to enjoy these clever combinations.
Inspired by the text based works of fellow Pop artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Ruscha pursued a lifelong artistic exploration into the formal elements of printed text and its fluid relationship to the visual image. By culling words, images and phrases that have been imprinted in his memory and that are found in mass media (print culture, advertising billboards, etc.), his work often serves as a visual encyclopedia of American culture. These symbols of consumer culture are as deeply rooted in the American vernacular as the mountains Ruscha paints.
His clever word associations pop off brightly colored canvases daring the viewer to react. For Ruscha words are also images, in that they provoke the imagination of the viewer.
Ruscha’a mounting paintings speak to how commercialism and consumerism are slowly encroaching on the natural world. This work is about before and after and the passage of time. The presence of commercialism and consumerism is unnatural and harsh, yet they accurately reflect the effect that our consumer driven culture has on the dwindling unspoiled natural world.
Mass media, billboards, and megastores are empires in their own right and have left an indelible imprint on our world. The unblemished views of these pristine monuments are slowly being encroached upon by sprawling suburban strip malls and colossal super stores. “The buildings violate the beauty of these mountains,” The abstraction with which he renders is classic Ruscha – he doesn’t give us too much but just enough to trigger our imaginations and associations. The subtlety of this rendering allows this painting to leave a far more substantial imprint on the viewer and make a much stronger statement on the condition of our world.