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I'm Just Crazy About That Little Girl: Edward Ruscha, 1976 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
Pretty Eyes/Electric Bills: Edward Ruscha, 1976 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
Smells Like Back of Old Hot Radio: Edward Ruscha, 1976 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
Dirty Baby: Edward Ruscha, 1977 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
Hope: Edward Ruscha, 1998 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
The End #40 : Edward Ruscha, 2003 (Tate Gallery/National Galleries of Scotland)
5 comments:
I've been living with this and the Finlay post since they went up day and night, which seems to be the new schedule, and they're both splendid in terms of the works themselves and, especially (and I know the artists would appreciate this) how you've arranged them, which creates in both cases a very powerful effect. I'm seized with a desire to visit Little Sparta and also to climb up the final frame in THE END. I'm pleased that I resisted the urge to type this in all caps. I think the black-spattered HOPE image is powerfully sad and it's funny that it lives in Scotland with so many Finlays. IDYLLS END IN THUNDERSTORMS indeed. I was reading Finlay's biography and wasn't aware that he was born in the Bahamas. Idylls frequently end in thunderstorms there.
And, by the way, what you've done orchestrating the colors descending the Ruscha chain, should be studied in school as well as appreciated by readers/viewers.
Curtis,
Thanks for noticing Ruscha's answer to Goethe's Theory of Colours.
I was interested in the way the Ruscha word works seem to be entirely surface, with the illusion of depth created by dutch-cleanser-girl receding-mirror layers of irony.
Whereas the Finlays wear their historical depth on their sleeves, so to speak, or as if minimalism were got-up in sans culottes.
I think that is a really accurate, cogent analysis.
Funny, Curtis, that we should be seeing connections as well as disconections between this pair of posts, the word works of Finlay and Ruscha, as it seems they are radically and totally unlike -- at least according to the quick categorical assessment of another blogger, who has suggested unequivocally (one of those drive-bys which you so enjoy) that the former are poems, the latter not.
Personally I am limited to an everything is what it is theory and whether it is then defined as a this or a that in someone's labelling system doesn't generally concern me overmuch.
Saying something is a poem or is not a poem is a clever way round saying what it is. This particular pigeonhole has really soft walls.
But then I suppose soft borders and grey areas are considered off limits pretty much, any more. Absolute certainty is so much... er, quicker.
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