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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Edward Ruscha catalogue raisonné.
Since the early 1960s Ed Ruscha has captured the spirit of the West in his words, phrases and imagery. The Uncertain Trail, 1986 is in many ways a painting made in the esteemed tradition of 19th century landscape painting. But The Uncertain Trail also has an eye to Hollywood's venerated movie genre, the Western. Like an old black and white film, it is cinematic in its camera-angle perspective, and the large canvas itself is like a movie screen. Text over imagery is integral to all films as we are reminded when the credits roll. In this case, Ruscha has substituted a censor strip for the expected text, implying the title--or something else--we fill in the blank. Here Ruscha prefers the ambiguous blank as a sign to stand in for the more explicit words.
"In many of the works from the 1980s, Ruscha has chosen to leave words out altogether, replacing them by silhouetted images that are themselves enigmatic enough to force the issue of language into the open and by floating white rectangles or underliners whose references are often supplied by the painting's title. Here Ruscha is playing somewhat with both our familiarity with his work, and with the self-described parameters of this art up to this point, by creating the expectation of language and then purposefully not supplying it" (D. Cameron, Ed Ruscha Paintings, 1990, p. 15).
Albert Bierstadt, The Oregon Trail, 1869 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Since the early 1960s Ed Ruscha has captured the spirit of the West in his words, phrases and imagery. The Uncertain Trail, 1986 is in many ways a painting made in the esteemed tradition of 19th century landscape painting. But The Uncertain Trail also has an eye to Hollywood's venerated movie genre, the Western. Like an old black and white film, it is cinematic in its camera-angle perspective, and the large canvas itself is like a movie screen. Text over imagery is integral to all films as we are reminded when the credits roll. In this case, Ruscha has substituted a censor strip for the expected text, implying the title--or something else--we fill in the blank. Here Ruscha prefers the ambiguous blank as a sign to stand in for the more explicit words.
"In many of the works from the 1980s, Ruscha has chosen to leave words out altogether, replacing them by silhouetted images that are themselves enigmatic enough to force the issue of language into the open and by floating white rectangles or underliners whose references are often supplied by the painting's title. Here Ruscha is playing somewhat with both our familiarity with his work, and with the self-described parameters of this art up to this point, by creating the expectation of language and then purposefully not supplying it" (D. Cameron, Ed Ruscha Paintings, 1990, p. 15).
Albert Bierstadt, The Oregon Trail, 1869 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH