Pastel and graphite on paper
Text and Language
Pop Art and its Legacy
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
National Heritage Memorial Fund
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-ruscha-1882" aria-label="More by Edward Ruscha" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Edward Ruscha</a>
PRETTY EYES ELECTRIC BILLS
ARTIST ROOMS
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
abstraction
body
eye
inscriptions
non-representational
people
symbols and personifications
text
title of work
<p>This drawing comprises a seven-word phrase that slightly, but significantly, expands upon the work’s four-word title. The text ‘SOME PRETTY EYES AND SOME ELECTRIC BILLS’ is arranged over three centred lines of three, then one, then three words, in the top half of the horizontally aligned sheet of paper. The neat letters display the untouched, off-white colour of the paper and are surrounded by a bright blue pastel background. These letters were not outlined by hand but were positioned on the paper using acetate stencils in the sans serif typeface. Once these inverse stencils were in place, the powdery pastel background was rubbed into the paper by hand and with rags, so that the white paper shows through in places to create an impression of diffuse light behind the particles of blue pastel. A fixative was then applied to maintain the crisp division between the text and the background, before the acetate stencils were peeled back to reveal the bare, white paper surface of the individual letters. In his reliance upon the technical aids of graphic design, Ruscha subverts the common understanding of drawing as a medium of creative skill and self-expression. This mechanical severity is then purposefully undermined by the sensuous application of pastel, a traditional medium of fine art, together with its hazy blue colour which brings to mind a bright sunny sky and the drawing’s horizontal format which also has a landscape association.</p>
paper unique pastel graphite
21 March 2009 – 13 June 2010
2010-06-13
21 March 2009 – 13 June 2010
2010-06-13
2009-03-21
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2009-03-21
Edward Ruscha
Collection based display
18 September 2010 – 16 April 2011
2011-04-16
18 September 2010 – 20 November 2010
2010-11-20
2010-09-18
Inverness Museum & Art Gallery (Inverness, UK)
http://www.invernessmuseum.com
15 January 2011 – 26 February 2011
2011-02-26
2011-01-15
Swanson Gallery (Thurso, UK)
http://www.highland.gov.uk/leisureandtourism/what-to-see/arts/ar
5 March 2011 – 16 April 2011
2011-04-16
2011-03-05
Timespan (Sutherland, UK)
http://www.timespan.org.uk/
2010-09-18
ARTIST ROOMS 2010: Highland Touring Circuit - Ed Ruscha
Loan-out
28 May 2011 – 29 October 2011
2011-10-29
28 May 2011 – 29 October 2011
2011-10-29
2011-05-28
Wolverhampton Art Gallery (Wolverhampton, UK)
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk
2011-05-28
ARTIST ROOMS 2011: Ed Ruscha
Loan-out
22 February 2013 – 22 May 2013
2013-05-22
22 February 2013 – 22 May 2013
2013-05-22
2013-02-22
Hatton Gallery (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
2013-02-22
ARTIST ROOMS 2013: Ed Ruscha
Loan-out
22 July 2019 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
22 July 2019 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
2019-07-22
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2019-07-22
AR Ed Ruscha
Collection based display
PRETTY EYES, ELECTRIC BILLS
support: 574 × 721 mm
frame: 726 × 870 × 38 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a>
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the <a href="/search?gid=999999967" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">National Heritage Memorial Fund</a> and the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 2008
<div class="text">
<p>This drawing comprises a seven-word phrase that slightly, but significantly, expands upon the work’s four-word title. The text ‘SOME PRETTY EYES AND SOME ELECTRIC BILLS’ is arranged over three centred lines of three, then one, then three words, in the top half of the horizontally aligned sheet of paper. The neat letters display the untouched, off-white colour of the paper and are surrounded by a bright blue pastel background. These letters were not outlined by hand but were positioned on the paper using acetate stencils in the sans serif typeface. Once these inverse stencils were in place, the powdery pastel background was rubbed into the paper by hand and with rags, so that the white paper shows through in places to create an impression of diffuse light behind the particles of blue pastel. A fixative was then applied to maintain the crisp division between the text and the background, before the acetate stencils were peeled back to reveal the bare, white paper surface of the individual letters. In his reliance upon the technical aids of graphic design, Ruscha subverts the common understanding of drawing as a medium of creative skill and self-expression. This mechanical severity is then purposefully undermined by the sensuous application of pastel, a traditional medium of fine art, together with its hazy blue colour which brings to mind a bright sunny sky and the drawing’s horizontal format which also has a landscape association.</p>
<p>In this drawing, the juxtaposition of the phrases ‘PRETTY EYES’ and ‘ELECTRIC BILLS’ is incongruous; the first conjures romantic and evocative images while the second makes reference to a mundane chore. The artist has explained his own view of this drawing, stating: ‘<i>Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills </i>is my way of separating two subjects that are on the far end of the world from each other. This somehow gets to be the reason that I want to make a work of art of this discord.’ (Quoted in d’Offay 2009, p.80.)</p>
<p>These disparate statements are linked by the repetition of the word ‘some’ that precedes both phrases. As a qualifier, it is imprecise and vague – it does not reveal if these ‘pretty eyes’ belong to more than one person and it does not tell the viewer precisely how many ‘electric bills’ there are. As Ruscha himself has said, ‘I’ve always had a deep respect for things that are odd, for things that cannot be explained. Explanations seem to me to sort of finish things off’ (Ruscha and Schwartz 2002, p.305). Accepting the mystery of this dual statement is therefore paramount. The viewer can never hope to know for certain what it means: in all likelihood, there is no specific meaning, or only a very personal or anecdotal one. <br/>Ruscha worked as a layout artist at a Los Angeles advertising agency after graduating from the Chouinard Art Institute in 1960, becoming the production designer for the influential <i>Artforum </i>magazine during 1965–9, under the pseudonym Eddie Russia. As the writer Mary Richards notes of works such as <i>PRETTY EYES, ELECTRIC BILLS</i>, ‘Legible and authoritative like painted signs, these statements look bold and factual even when the phrases are kooky’ (Richards 2008, p.71). This intentional mixing of visual authority with verbal jokiness is a key characteristic of Ruscha’s group of ‘catch-phrase’ drawings dating from the 1970s in ARTIST ROOMS (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ruscha-i-plead-insanity-because-im-just-crazy-about-that-little-girl-ar00053" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00053</span></a>–<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ruscha-hollywood-tantrum-ar00059" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00059</span></a>). These works build on Ruscha’s west coast pop art style of the early 1960s which established his reputation, replacing the slick visual representations of everyday objects and LA architecture (for example, <i>Standard Study #3</i> 1963, Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ruscha-standard-study-3-ar00050" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00050</span></a>) with a precise focus on the imaginative potential of language, while retaining the artist’s trademark playful irony. The critic Dave Hickey has observed of these textual snippets: ‘Like the drawings themselves, these words are at once objects and ideas.’ (Anthony d’Offay Gallery 1998, p.33.) By maintaining this duality of material and concept, Ruscha’s words both engage with and escape linguistic signification, toying with the absurdity of language.  </p>
<p>Likening the space of Ruscha’s word drawings to the endless landscapes of the western United States, the curator Neville Wakefield has commented: ‘The semaphore of fragmented messages that appear, disappear, and reappear across these deserted fields are drawn from the collective memory bank of songs, advertisements, billboards, brand names, platitudes, and the other disembodied voices that make up the <i>langue trouvé</i> of the motile world.’ (Ibid., p.28.) This suggests that the juxtaposition of the two unrelated phrases in <i>PRETTY EYES, ELECTRIC BILLS</i> is a fleeting occurrence that has no concrete or long-lasting meaning. The phrases may have just landed there, beside each other, in the vast imaginative space of Ruscha’s abstract field of colour. </p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>
<i>Ed Ruscha: New Paintings and a Retrospective of the Works on Paper</i>, exhibition catalogue, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1998.<br/>Edward Ruscha and Alexandra Schwartz (eds.), <i>Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London 2002. <br/>Mary Richards, <i>Ed Ruscha</i>, London 2008.<br/>Anthony d’Offay and others, ‘Me, You, Us: Anthony d’Offay and others on ARTIST ROOMS’, <i>TATE ETC.</i>, no.16, Summer 2009, pp.74–81. </p>
<p>Stephanie Straine<br/>March 2010</p>
</div>

Summary
2012-07-03T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction body eye inscriptions non-representational people symbols and personifications text title of work