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Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf
Fun Vacation (200, Engberg) (Hand signed 13/16 by Ed Ruscha AND Kenny Scharf)

1990

About the Item

Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf Fun Vacation (200, Engberg), 1990 Lithograph in five colors on white Rives BFK paper (hand signed by BOTH Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf) 36 × 27 inches Hand-signed by artist, Hand signed by both Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf lower right; dated lower right; hand numbered 13/16 in pencil; with the printer's blind stamp Printed/Published by Hamilton Press Catalogue Raisonné: 200, Engberg Unframed Rarely seen on the market, since most other editions are already in the permanent collection of major museums and institutions, "Fun Vacation (The Cruiser)" is the result of a unique collaboration three decades ago - 1990 - between Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf. This historic piece is hand signed by both Ruscha and Scharf and numbered from the very limited edition of only 16. A terrific piece for collectors and fans of both of these artists. The sheet has desirable deckled edges, excellent condition, with natural bleed-through colors, and therefore must ship flat and not rolled. The ship is a motif that Ed Ruscha has visited many times, particularly as it is pictured here as a shadowy mirage that seems to both emerge from and disappear into the fog. Ruscha’s work from this period is viewed by many as a metaphor for the end of the American Dream that was originated by valiant sailors as they sailed through uncertainty and found a new land. In a recent conversation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ruscha acknowledged that his entire career has been preoccupied with this endlessly fascinating theme. And this work -depicting an almost unmoored ship, also alluding to American space exploration - is as emblematic as any of that theme. In this rare work, Ruscha and Scharf design a fantastical narrative around the recurrent motif of the ship. Here, the printed slogans and psychedelic color strips are emblematic of Ruscha and Scharf’s vibrant and satirist practice. Ed Ruscha - Biography: There are things that I’m constantly looking at that I feel should be elevated to greater status, almost to philosophical status or to a religious status. That’s why taking things out of context is a useful tool to an artist. It’s the concept of taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter. —Ed Ruscha At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist ... who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. In 1956, Ruscha moved from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. During his time in art school, he had been painting in the manner of Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and came across a reproduction of Jasper Johns’s Target with Four Faces (1955). Struck by Johns’s use of readymade images as supports for abstraction, Ruscha began to consider how he could employ graphics in order to expose painting’s dual identity as both object and illusion. For his first word painting, E.Ruscha (1959), he intentionally miscalculated the space it would take to write his first initial and surname on the canvas, inserting the last two letters, HA, above and indicating the “error” with an arrow. After graduation, Ruscha began to work for ad agencies, honing his skills in schematic design and considering questions of scale, abstraction, and viewpoint, which became integral to his painting and photography. He produced his first artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations—a series of deadpan photographs the artist took while driving on Route 66 from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City—in 1963. Ruscha since has gone on to create over a dozen artists’ books, including the 25-foot-long, accordion-folded Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) and his version of Kerouac's iconic On the Road (2009). Ruscha also paints trompe-l’oeil bound volumes and alters book spines and interiors with painted words: books in all forms pervade his investigations of language and the distribution of art and information. Ruscha’s paintings of the 1960s explore the noise and the fluidity of language. With works such as OOF (1962–63)—which presents the exclamation in yellow block letters on a blue ground—it is nearly impossible to look at the painting without verbalizing the visual. Since his first exhibition with Gagosian in 1993, Ruscha has had twenty-one solo exhibitions with the gallery, including Custom-Built Intrigue: Drawings 1974–84 (2017), comprising a decade of reverse-stencil drawings of phrases rendered in pastel, dry pigment, and various edible substances, from spinach to carrot juice. The first retrospective of Ruscha’s drawings was held in 2004 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ruscha continues to influence contemporary artists worldwide, his formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular evolving in form and meaning as technology and internet platforms alter the essence of human communication. Ruscha represented the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005) with Course of Empire, an installation of ten paintings. Inspired by nineteenth century American artist Thomas Cole’s famous painting cycle of the same name, the work alludes to the pitfalls surrounding modernist visions of progress. In 2018 Ruscha’s Course of Empire was presented concurrently with Cole’s at the National Gallery in London. -Courtesy Gagosian More about Kenny Scharf Kenny Scharf is an American painter. He was born in 1958 in Los Angeles, California, where he currently lives and works. In 1978 he moved to New York to study at the BFA School of Visual Arts from which he graduated in 1980. He befriended artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Keith Haring, and gained notoriety in the 1980s in New York for bridging contemporary art and graffiti. Scharf uses images from popular culture, especially from TV cartoons such as The Jetsons, The Flintstones, and The Simpsons, to bring art to everyday life. His art highlights a kind of eternal youth, a utopic colorful pop world full of comical monsters, floating donuts, and one-eyed creatures. -Courtesy Jeffrey Deitch
  • Creator:
    Ed Ruscha and Kenny Scharf (1937, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1990
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 36 in (91.44 cm)Width: 27 in (68.58 cm)
  • Medium:
    Pencil,Graphite,Lithograph
  • Movement & Style:
    Pop Art
  • Period:
    1990-1999
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1745214012312
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