Acrylic paint on canvas
Text and Language
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on loan
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>
Pay Nothing Until April
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
advertising
evening
inscriptions
landscape
lifestyle and culture
mountain
non-representational
snow
society
symbols and personifications
text
times of the day
title of work
weather
<p>Ruscha has stencilled the seemingly unrelated text ‘PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL’ on top of snow-capped mountains. Awe-inspiring natural imagery meets banal, consumerist text. Ruscha, who studied graphic design, invented the typeface, which is inspired by the Hollywood sign. He calls it ‘Boy Scout Utility Modern’, and has described it as ‘no-style’. Of the dramatic scenery he has commented that they are not realistic depictions: ‘They’re ideas of mountains, picturing some kind of unobtainable bliss or glory … tall, dangerous and beautiful’.</p><p><em>Gallery label, July 2019</em></p>
painting acrylic paint canvas
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
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
30 June 2012 – 23 September 2012
2012-09-23
30 June 2012 – 23 September 2012
2012-09-23
2012-06-30
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (Bristol, UK)
http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk
2012-06-30
ARTIST ROOMS 2012: Raw Materials: Four American Artists, 1972-2007
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
10 September 2023 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
10 September 2023 – 6 January 2024
2024-01-06
2023-09-10
Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA)
7 April 2024 – 6 October 2024
2024-10-06
2024-04-07
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA)
2023-09-10
Ed Ruscha: A Retrospective
Loan-out
Pay Nothing Until April
support: 1527 × 1525 × 40 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>
<i>Pay Nothing Until April</i> depicts precisely detailed snow-capped mountains contrasted against a yellow sky suggestive of sunset or sunrise. The low lighting casts azure blue shadows down the sides of the central peaks while the foreground is rendered by the dark silhouette of an incline that cuts across the bottom right corner of the tableau. Painted on top of this landscape is the seemingly unrelated phrase ‘PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL’ in a clean, modern font that is evenly spaced so that each word occupies a separate line in the centre of the picture. This work belongs to a large body of paintings, begun in the 1980s, in which Ruscha overlays natural landscapes with texts (see also <i>Daily Planet</i> 2003, 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-daily-planet-ar00048" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00048</span></a>).</p>
<p>To create this work, Ruscha sprayed a thin layer of paint onto the canvas, then worked the image up in acrylic paint using medium-sized brush. The text was applied using stencils, and is presented in Boy Scout Utility Modern, a typeface of the artist’s own creation described by him as a sort of ‘no-style’ (Richards 2008, p.82).</p>
<p>
<i>Pay Nothing Until April</i> expresses a cool, detached world-view in keeping with Ruscha’s conceptual works such as his photo-book <i>(Every Building On) The Sunset Strip</i> 1966 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Roughly the size of a poster that might be displayed in a shop window, the picture’s alpine setting and eye-grabbing lettering call to mind an advertisement for a bargain ski holiday. Despite its ready-made appearance, however, the pairing of text and image was conceived by Ruscha who executed the montage with a high degree of finish. Nevertheless Ruscha claims to be indifferent to the eclectic source material that he amasses: ‘I’m empty headed in many ways, and don’t know why I follow what I follow. Like most people, I operate on an automatic mode, and everything is an involuntary reflex. Logic flies out of the window when you’re making a picture, at least it does with me. And thank God it does.’ (Hayward Gallery 2010, p.63.) As with the aforementioned photo-book, which brings together images on the basis of somewhat arbitrary categorisations, <i>Pay Nothing Until April </i>appears to have been created in accordance with a pointedly superficial sensibility. </p>
<p>Ruscha has spent his entire career living and working in the southern Californian city of Los Angeles, and its film industry has had an important bearing on his work. Ruscha has confessed that, for him, the backdrops for paintings such as <i>Pay Nothing Until April</i> are ‘not really mountains in the sense that a naturalist would paint a picture of a mountain. They’re ideas of mountains, picturing some kind of unobtainable bliss or glory … tall, dangerous and beautiful’ (quoted in Richards 2008, p.100). Appropriated from photographs and postcards or amalgamated from different mountain ranges, these scenes call to mind the mountainscapes of adventure movies such as the 1969 James Bond picture <i>On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</i> or the logo of Paramount Pictures, one of Hollywood’s biggest production companies, as much as they echo the sublime landscapes made popular by European Romantic painting. By deflating awe-inspiring natural imagery with the imposition of banal, consumerist text rendered in ‘no-style’, Ruscha’s painting reflects the city in which he lives, a place he once referred to as ‘the ultimate cardboard cut-out town’ (quoted in Schwartz 2004, p.244).</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Alexandra Schwartz (ed.), <i>Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2004.<br/>Mary Richards, <i>Ed Ruscha. </i>Singapore 2008.<br/>Edward Ruscha, James Ellroy, Ralph Rugoff, <i>Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting</i>, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London 2010.</p>
<p>Luke Healey<br/>November 2011</p>
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Summary
2012-06-22T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>Ruscha has stencilled the seemingly unrelated text ‘PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL’ on top of snow-capped mountains. Awe-inspiring natural imagery meets banal, consumerist text. Ruscha, who studied graphic design, invented the typeface, which is inspired by the Hollywood sign. He calls it ‘Boy Scout Utility Modern’, and has described it as ‘no-style’. Of the dramatic scenery he has commented that they are not realistic depictions: ‘They’re ideas of mountains, picturing some kind of unobtainable bliss or glory … tall, dangerous and beautiful’.</p>
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Display caption
2019-07-26T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
abstraction advertising evening inscriptions landscape lifestyle and culture mountain non-representational snow society symbols and personifications text times of the day title of work weather