Acrylic paint on paper
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>
DEC 30th
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
architecture
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
countries and continents
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
Los Angeles, Hollywood
places
signage
silhouette
townscapes / man-made features
USA
<p>By using acrylic spray paints and a custom-made stencil, Ruscha has produced a drawing which has no immediate relationship to the ‘artist’s hand’. Drawing is conventionally understood as expressive mark-making that demonstrates an artist’s feeling and skill. Ruscha disrupts that idea. The work features the famous ‘Hollywood’ sign. Ruscha makes it even more iconic than it is in real life by perching it on a mountain top. (The real sign is half way up a hill). He has said: ‘The idea of Hollywood has lots of meanings and one – to me – is this image of something fake up here being held up with sticks’.</p><p><em>Gallery label, July 2019</em></p>
paper unique acrylic paint
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
29 April 2017 – 29 April 2018
2018-04-29
29 April 2017 – 29 April 2018
2018-04-29
2017-04-29
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2017-04-29
ARTIST ROOMS Ed Ruscha
Collection based display
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
DEC. 30th
support: 1016 × 1524 mm
frame: 1087 × 1589 × 50 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>DEC. 30th</i> is a large work on white museum board created using acrylic spray paints and a custom-made stencil that forms a silhouette of the Hollywood sign perched on a hilltop. The image was created in two stages: firstly, fine black paint was sprayed over a stencil of the Hollywood sign on the lower part of the paper; then red and orange layers were sprayed to fill the upper part. This second paint coating also covers the stencilled sign image, leaving it blurry. The paint coverage is a fine mist of various sized paint particles, with some areas highly pigmented blends of red and yellow, evoking a sunset. Through this process, Ruscha produced a drawing which has no immediate relationship to the artist’s hand: both the paint application and the visual motif are mediated by the technical tools of the spray gun and the graphic stencil. As the curator Cornelia Butler has noted, Ruscha’s approach disrupts the fine art understanding of drawing as expressive mark-making, by employing the ‘cool masquerade of graphic design’ to challenge the received notion of drawing as an articulation of the artist’s thought processes and technical skill (Rowell and Butler 2004, p.28).</p>
<p>The dimensions of this work evoke the widescreen movie format, which elongates what is seen on screen, just as the sign’s lettering is stretched to a more elongated appearance. The sign is positioned at an oblique angle, as if the viewer is peering up at it, the final letters receding into the middle distance. Earlier in his career, Ruscha precisely duplicated the widescreen CinemaScope aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in the dimensions of certain canvases, such as the large painting <i>Standard Station</i> 1966 (reproduced in Richards 2008, p.24–5). The title, <i>DEC. 30th</i>, bears no obvious relationship to its subject matter, and perhaps refers to the particular day on which the drawing was executed. </p>
<p>The artist began to use the Hollywood sign in the late 1960s, in such works as the lithograph <i>Hollywood </i>1969 (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-hollywood-p07716" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07716</span></a>). In the lithograph, the sign is much smaller, and recedes in the opposite direction – from right to left – to that of the sign in <i>DEC. 30th</i>. It is a motif that the artist has returned to repeatedly, from small prints to an actual billboard erected in Los Angeles, testing the limits of its reproducibility and resistance to reversal, enlargement and other types of visual experimentation. </p>
<p>The writer Mary Richards has discussed some of the characteristics of <i>DEC. 30th</i> and related works, commenting that: ‘Ruscha has even “Hollywoodised” the Hollywood sign, that universal symbol of the glitz and glamour of the movie industry, by placing the letters of the Los Angeles landmark on the crest of a mountain rather than picturing them in their actual location halfway up Mount Lee.’ (Richards 2008, p.114.) Ruscha’s reworking of the recognisable symbol creates a dramatic compositional structure with a dynamic diagonal plane, that focuses on the silhouette of the sign perched perilously on an imagined mountaintop. The iconic sign was erected in 1923 to promote a real estate development, and was originally the longer ‘Hollywoodland’. In 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce removed the ‘land’, and the sign was co-opted fully by the film industry as a landscape-defining monument to its myths and dreams. </p>
<p>Filming a 1981 documentary on his work and its relationship to Los Angeles, the artist said of the iconic sign: ‘The idea of Hollywood has lots of meanings and one – to me – is this image of something fake up here being held up with sticks … I looked outside my window here and I saw the sign “Hollywood” and it became the subject matter for me. It only lasted for a while so the actual remnants of the sign are not even important to me.’ (Ruscha and Schwartz 2002, p.220.) Ruscha’s use of the sign as an image reveals the fragility of both its material structure and its mythic or symbolic content. </p>
<p>
<b>Further reading </b>
<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/>Margit Rowell and Cornelia Butler, <i>Cotton Puffs, Q-tips, Smoke and Mirrors: the Drawings of Ed Ruscha</i>, exhibition catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2004.<br/>Mary Richards, <i>Ed Ruscha</i>, London 2008.</p>
<p>Stephanie Straine <br/>March 2010</p>
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Summary
2012-07-03T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>By using acrylic spray paints and a custom-made stencil, Ruscha has produced a drawing which has no immediate relationship to the ‘artist’s hand’. Drawing is conventionally understood as expressive mark-making that demonstrates an artist’s feeling and skill. Ruscha disrupts that idea. The work features the famous ‘Hollywood’ sign. Ruscha makes it even more iconic than it is in real life by perching it on a mountain top. (The real sign is half way up a hill). He has said: ‘The idea of Hollywood has lots of meanings and one – to me – is this image of something fake up here being held up with sticks’.</p>
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Display caption
2019-07-26T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
architecture cities, towns, villages (non-UK) countries and continents emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities Los Angeles, Hollywood places signage silhouette townscapes / man-made features USA