Acquisitions
Featured Acquisitions and Gifts
ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation
Ed Ruscha (born 1937)
One room comprising 22 works, including five paintings and 17 works on paper.
Ed Ruscha’s exploration of language and American West Coast culture centred on Hollywood has made him one of the pre-eminent artists of his generation. Since the early 1960s he has channelled his fascination with words and the act of communication into books, print-making, drawing and painting. His work has much in common with Pop Art, but while Ruscha’s carefully planned paintings and drawings draw on popular references and mass media, his playful use of irony, paradox and absurdist juxtapositions have set him firmly apart from any movement. The d’Offay Donation holds a remarkable survey of Ruscha’s work dating between 1962 and 2005, including an important group of drawings and several key paintings that explore the various series that the artist has made since the 1960s. Early works such as Honk (1962) and Dance? (1973) depict single, pithy words in strong typographic format, while the catch-phrase drawings of the mid 1970s such as I plead insanity because I’m just crazy about that little girl (1976) invoke vernacular language against single fields of colour. A more brooding atmosphere emerges in the later series, The End, which illustrates the words with imagery that recalls fading film credits. The artist’s enjoyment of the contradictory and illogical is at play in the mountain paintings, a sequence of works begun in the late 1990s in which sublime alpine landscapes form the backdrop for banal statements, as found in Pay Nothing Until April ( 2003).
DANCE? 1973
Mixed media on canvas
1372 x 1524 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Ed Ruscha
I PLEAD INSANITY BECAUSE I'M JUST CRAZY ABOUT THAT LITTLE GIRL 1976
Pastel on paper
578 x 730 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Ed Ruscha
Pay Nothing Until April 2003
Acrylic on canvas
1524 x 1524 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Ed Ruscha
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- Johan Grimonprez
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- Richard Hamilton
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- Ian Hamilton Finlay
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- Damien Hirst
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- Jenny Holzer
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- Alex Katz
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- Anselm Kiefer
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- Jeff Koons
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- Jannis Kounellis
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- Sol LeWitt
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- Richard Long
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- Robert Mapplethorpe
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- Agnes Martin
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- Mario Merz
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- Ron Mueck
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- Bruce Nauman
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- Charles Ray
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- Gerhard Richter
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- Ed Ruscha
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- Robert Ryman
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- Robert Therrien
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- Cy Twombly
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- Bill Viola
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- Andy Warhol
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- Lawrence Weiner
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- Francesca Woodman
