Ed Ruscha

Livet Reichard Company, New York
Private Collection (acquired directly the above)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Ed Ruscha, They Called Her Styrene, London 2000, n.p., illustrated in colour
Lisa Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1: 1956–1976, New Haven 2014, p. 378, no. D1974.37, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is attached verso to the mount in several places.
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Energy Robbing Gears, with its elegant, tranquil aesthetic of three words scrawled receding against a contrasted powdery background, is a magnificent example of Ed Ruscha’s bleak humour, unmatched graphic flair and deadpan delivery which spawned from his work in sign advertising, typesetting and print media. It instantly sparks layers of associations: the Star Wars opening crawl, a car maintenance manual, a vintage out-of-focus photograph, or perhaps the “The End” font from an old Hollywood movie. The iconic series of gunpowder ribbon drawings had begun at a time when Ed Ruscha had given up painting to explore a wider range of unusual media, from coffee stains to blood, juices, egg yolk and grass. Amongst these experiments, gunpowder, because of its forgiving nature was the most successful: "it left a charcoal that had a kind of a warm tone to it, and it could be used in a way that was very easy to correct when you wanted to... And so it became a convenient material, and a material that I liked. It had a good surface to it.” (Edward Ruscha quoted in Christophe Cherix "Interview with Ed Ruscha," Oral History Program, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York 2012, p. 42) This exquisite trompe-l’oeil of cursive capital letters is so convincing that, when the gunpowder drawings were first exhibited in 1967, the crowd of gallery-goers believed them to be airbrushed - when their actual medium was revealed, it caused quite a sensation. 

Ruscha’s concern with the plastic qualities of the written form suggests that little attention is brought to the choice of words in themselves. If it is true that these are generally not picked because of their meaning, however the choice is not a random one. Whether these words appear to him in dreams or evoke something true to the Midwestern American roots of his formative and teenage years, they are often deeply embedded in the artist’s psyche. "Words come to me in dreams. If I do remember sentences, I have to write them down instantly or they're forgotten five seconds after I'm out of bed. I'm going to forget them unless I absolutely sit down and write them. There is some wicked truth behind dreams. They are so out of your control. They're involuntary. There's got to be some protein to them, something important happening in dreams—especially the words that come out of them. It's a diabolical time." (Ed Ruscha, 2006)

Encapsulating Ruscha’s signature blend of uncannily commonplace and impassive theatricality, Energy Robbing Gears is a deeply evocative example of the artist’s unnerving and poetic practice.