Lithograph on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
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>
OK State I
ARTIST ROOMS 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
abstraction
banality
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
inscriptions
letter of alphabet
lifestyle and culture
non-representational
phrase
popular culture
society
symbols and personifications
text
texture
universal concepts
<p><span>OK (Slate I)</span> is a lithograph with the word ‘OK’ at its centre. The letters are a peach-orange colour and the background is blue. The background takes a pure shade of blue in the region immediately above and below the letters, while the section behind the letters has a purple hue. There is also purple along the top and bottom edges of the piece. The letters, meanwhile, are a darker shade of peach at their centre than at their top and bottom. Small tendrils of the text’s peach-orange colour extend beyond the edge of the text and mingle with the blue of the background. This gives the letters a fuzzy-looking effect. The lithograph was made by Ruscha in 1990, but it is a technique he has used throughout his career. Lithography allows images and text to be printed quickly and can be used to produce dozens of identical images.</p>
paper print lithograph
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
12 October 2018
12 October 2018
2018-10-12
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2018-10-12
Ideas Depot
Collection based display
OK (State I)
Image: 685 × 914 mm
Support: 823 × 1053 mm
Frame: 1073 × 843 mm  

<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a> 
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2011
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>OK (Slate I)</i> is a lithograph with the word ‘OK’ at its centre. The letters are a peach-orange colour and the background is blue. The background takes a pure shade of blue in the region immediately above and below the letters, while the section behind the letters has a purple hue. There is also purple along the top and bottom edges of the piece. The letters, meanwhile, are a darker shade of peach at their centre than at their top and bottom. Small tendrils of the text’s peach-orange colour extend beyond the edge of the text and mingle with the blue of the background. This gives the letters a fuzzy-looking effect. The lithograph was made by Ruscha in 1990, but it is a technique he has used throughout his career. Lithography allows images and text to be printed quickly and can be used to produce dozens of identical images.</p>
<p>The pictorial space in <i>OK (Slate I)</i> is abstract and non-perspectival. The blue and purple bands appear to radiate and merge with the hazy-edged text. There are no other objects in the frame against which the viewer might measure the size of the text. Ruscha has said of this kind of work, ‘The words have these abstract shapes, they live in a world of no size. You can make them any size, and what’s the real size? Nobody knows ...’ (quoted in Marshall 2010, p.106). Indeed the precise meaning of the text is also unfixed. It could allude to the abbreviated form of ‘okay’, a casual slang phrase that gestures to the stereotype of laidback Californian cool of the artist’s city of residence, Los Angeles. Alternatively, the letters might be indicative of Ruscha’s home state of Oklahoma, which can be referred to with the abbreviation ‘OK’.</p>
<p>Ruscha had trained as a graphic artist at Chouinard Institute of Art (now California Institute of Arts) in the late 1950s and later worked as a layout artist for a Los Angeles advertising agency. Text-based work has been central to his artistic practice and is well-represented in the ARTIST ROOMS collection, including the early painting <i>HONK </i>1962 (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-honk-ar00184" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00184</span></a>) and the later works <i>Pay Nothing Until April</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-pay-nothing-until-april-ar00047" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00047</span></a>) and <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>). The dissolving serif letters in <i>OK (Slate I) </i>sit between the rough-edged, hand-painted type of <i>HONK</i> and the ‘no-style’ of Ruscha’s invented Boy Scout Utility Modern typeface in the paintings from 2003. Ruscha has commented that there is no grand reason behind the words he incorporates in his work, he is more interested in the sounds they make and the shapes they form. He has commented: ‘Words are pattern-like, and in their horizontality they answer my investigation into landscape. They are almost not words—they are objects that become words.’ (Quoted in Marshall 2003, p.106.)</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Alexandra Schwartz, <i>Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles,</i> Cambridge, Massachusetts 2010.<br/>Richard D. Marshall, <i>Ed Ruscha</i>, London 2003.<br/>Mary Richards, <i>Ed Ruscha</i>, London 2008.</p>
<p>Thomas Flanagan<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>November 2014</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
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Summary
2016-03-18T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction banality emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities inscriptions letter of alphabet lifestyle and culture non-representational phrase popular culture society symbols and personifications text texture universal concepts