Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive
Artist
Edward Ruscha
(American, born 1937)
Date1969
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 60 × 55 inches (152.4 × 139.7 cm)
Credit LineGift of Norman and Elaine Polsky, Fixtures Furniture, Kansas City
Object numberF86-50/3
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionBright kelly-green backgound, graduating to black at top 8 inches of canvas. In the middle of far left edge are 3 marbles, seeming to float above the surface, with their shadows visible below. Middle of far right edge are an apple and a marble, seeming to float above the surface, with their shadows visible below.Exhibition HistoryThe Not-So-Still Life: A Century of California
Still Life Painting and Sculpture,
San Jose Museum of Art, November 23, 2003-February 15, 2004, Pasadena Museum of
California Art, March 6-June 27, 2004, no. 114.
In Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive, Edward Ruscha explores an obscure language of visual relationships. He divorces the objects depicted from their everyday contexts by placing them within an infinite, surreal space. The relationships that exist among the marbles, apples and olive are equally interpretations. The marbles might refer to childhood, the olive to hors d'oeuvres and martinis and the apple to the Fall of Adam and Eve. Such a reading makes this a meditation on the loss of innocence. Alternatively, Ruscha may have constructed a playful dialog among round forms or a treatise on Newton's law.
With
Myra Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, MO;
Fixtures Furniture, Kansas City, MO;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1986.
Dave Hickey, Peter Plagens, Anne Livet, Henry T. Hopkins, The Works of Edward Ruscha (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1982), 87, (repro.).
Pat Poncy, ed., Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2003), 198, 299, (repro.).
Susan
Landauer, The Not-So-Still Life: A
Century of California Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003), 114, (repro.), 127.
Copyright© Edward Ruscha
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