Iconic Work By Ed Ruscha, Created For The American Agent Bud Cort

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New York, New York - Sothebys spring Day sale of Contemporary Art on May 15th, 2008, will feature Ed Ruschas I Dont Want No Retro Spective, 1979, an iconic work which recounts a fascinating story about the artist and the American actor, Bud Cort, arguably best known for his iconic role in the 1971 American film classic Harold and Maude opposite Ruth Gordon (pictured above, est. $1/1.5 million*). Immortalized on the cover for Edward Ruschas monumental 1982 retrospective, which originated at the San Francisco Museum of Art and later traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I Dont Want No Retro Spective will be the cover lot of the upcoming sale. Ruscha presented I Dont Want No Retro Spective to his friend Bud Cort following Corts near-death accident on the Hollywood Freeway in 1979. Ruscha gave the work to the actor on his hospital bed, yet the phrase depicted, I Dont Want No Retro Spective, goes back several years earlier, when the pair was having dinner together at a Los Angeles restaurant. As Cort recalls, Ruscha had just returned from a show in Switzerland where he had mentioned that he had come across a theatre that was screening three of Buds films - Brewster McCloud, Harold and Maude and Why Shoot the Teacher? - and referred to it as somewhat of a Cort retrospective. In response, the actor paused then proclaimed, I dont want no retro spective. Ruscha found this statement so amusing that he decided to memorialize it in one of his works, waiting for the appropriate moment to surprise Mr. Cort. An essay by Bud Cort about the Ruscha is available upon request.
 
I Dont Want No Retro Spective exhibits a bright, powdery surface in bright pink hues recalling a brilliant setting sun over the California landscape or the dawning of a new day. Meticulously executed, the bold, white lettering emerges from the backdrop in capital letters and reveals the sentimental phrase which links Cort to Ruscha in a tribute to their friendship. Ruschas fascination for words in his art derived both from formative personal experience and a knowledge of art history. Growing up in Oklahoma, Ruscha saw very little fine art in the flesh and was much more influenced by the immediacy of vernacular imagery: comic strips, typography, book design and vivid commercial advertising. When he first moved to LA in 1956, he worked as a sign painter and graphic designer, as well as hand-setting type and working the presses for art book publishers. Defining the West Coast Pop sensibility, Ruscha was among the stable of the legendary Ferus Gallery, the gallery that staged Warhols breakthrough show of Campbells Soup Cans in 1962. In this explosive creative environment, Ruscha fashioned an independent voice and line of pictorial enquiry that revolved around text.
Isolating his textual ready-mades against an empty horizon line, Ruscha exposes the strangeness of his words and forces a semantic re-examination of their meaning. It is this spirit of Duchampian intellectual inquiry which is the hallmark of his best work and which distinguishes him from the pop tendencies of his peers. This inquiry is nonetheless embedded in his vernacular culture. The motif of words floating in emptiness is grounded in his personal experience, recalling the road journey west from his home town to LA along Route 66, a trip Ruscha later made frequently in both directions to visit his family. Along that road, the endlessly flat, featureless horizon line, so beautifully evoked in the soft pink hues of the present work, is only occasionally punctuated by the huge billboards which start as specs on the horizon and gradually get bigger until they slide past the window, contemporary signposts of modern America set against the limitless sky and setting sun of the mythical landscape of the Wild West.
*Estimates do not include buyers premium
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Bud Cort on
I DONT WANT NO RETRO SPECTIVE
This piece is profound to me on so many levels. Ed is one of my dearest and oldest friends. Many years ago he had just returned from a show in Switzerland and we met for a catch-up dinner. He said that while away hed passed a theatre which was showing three of my films - Brewster McCloud, Harold and Maude, and Why Shoot The Teacher? - I was truly surprised. said Ed. It was kind of a retrospective. Holy Moley! I replied. We took a sip of our wine and I looked at Ed and said, I dont want no retro spective.
He got it immediately and laughed. Yeah, youre a little too young to be resting on laurels.
Cut to 1979. Id had a near-death accident on the Hollywood Freeway, I hit an abandoned unlit stopped car in the middle lane of an extremely darkened stretch of highway.
Days later while I was in traction in the hospital, Eds wife Danna, a talented and very sharp photographer, came to visit. I asked her if she would record my present state for posterity - she ran out to her car and found a camera. Of course, they are unbelievable pictures - actually poetic.
Not long after - Ed himself returned from Europe and popped in. I awoke to see him standing at my bedside - his amazing blue eyes full of concern. Hey Pardner he smiled. s it goin Better for seeing you here I smiled back weakly. I brought a little something for you - do you remember when we had dinner and I told you about your films being shown at that theatre in Switzerland? Well I dont know if you recall what you said at the time - but I thought it was so funny that I decided to memorialize it as soon as I could. Ive been waiting for the right time to give it to you - and I figured Id better do it sooner than later - especially after hearing about you and definitely after seeing you here now. He unrolled a large hot pink piece of paper and placed it on top of me. s beautiful but I cant see it! He took it off me and held it up. I DONT WANT NO RETRO SPECTIVE. I laughed until I cried. Eds eyes filled with tears but he shookem off. Dinner - three weeks from tonight. Lucys El Adobe. re on. We high fived it. Ed clomped out into the night in his cowboy boots.
In 1982 Ed asked if Id mind (!) if he borrowed the picture. He was being given a worldwide retrospective and he thought it would be a gas to include it in the show. I didnt hesitate and later felt unbelievably honored when it was chosen to grace the retrospectives catalogue cover. It had a second, smaller world tour in 2004, ending up at the Whitney in New York and onto LACMA.
As for me, as of this writing, Ive had 4 more film retrospectives, in Paris, Prague, Maine and Austin, Texas. And, I liked them! Therefore, I cant really say I dont want one anymore. So, perhaps the time has come to let the picture go on. But it will never leave my heart. I can only wish its potential new owner as much joy and satisfaction as this beautiful artwork has given me over the years.

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