DO ING

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DO ING is a large and important work on paper from the early 1970s, and is the very first to exhibit the fractured setting of a common word, which gives the viewer pause to question the meaning of what they are reading.

Excerpt from Robert Enright, "The Painted Whirred: Ed Ruscha's Spin on Language" (interview), Border Crossings 106 (May 2008), pp. 44-46:

Border Crossings: Sometimes the ambiguity comes in the way you position the letters and the syllables in space.

Ed Ruscha: Maybe I've wondered why I don't fracture these words up and make them abstract. If I did that, people would say "Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense." This is supposed to make sense and most of my things do. But I'll do that every so often, like I'll letterspace a word in an odd way that seems to answer what I need to do at the time.

BC: Even DO-ING is broken in that way, isn't it? Are those decisions that come to you in the making or are they pre-planned, to invoke a word that you use? You say the art has to be preplanned so that it sounds as if there isn't a lot of serendipity or accident that happens in the making.

ER:. Sometimes. There's never any golden rule for what happens when I start working on something like that. With that word, I wanted to do D-O-I-N-G, but it could have been an accident and something slipped and I was making a pattern for it and then it became two words, like "do" and "ing." But I don't keep records of anything like that and I don't usually plan them.

The second image (right) shows some of the many publications in which Ed Ruscha's DO ING is reproduced and discussed.

Ed Ruscha Do-Ing original pastel drawing on paper

Excerpt from Robert Enright, "The Painted Whirred: Ed Ruscha's Spin on Language" (interview), Border Crossings 106 (May 2008), pp. 44-46:

Border Crossings: Sometimes the ambiguity comes in the way you position the letters and the syllables in space.

The second image (right) shows some of the many publications in which Ed Ruscha's DO ING is reproduced and discussed.

DO ING

Ed Ruscha

Artist: Edward Ruscha (b.1937)
Title: DO ING
Medium: Pastel on paper
Date: 1973
Size: 22 3/4 x 28 5/8 in : 57.8 x 72.7 cm
Inscriptions: Signed and dated on the reverse 'Edward Ruscha 1973', lower centre
Provenance: Collection of James Meeker and Peter Gill; Collection of Peter Gill, San Antonio; Janie Beggs Gallery, Beverly Hills; Collection of Tom O'Gara, Los Angeles
Exhibited: "The Works of Edward Ruscha," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, Mar 25-May 23, 1982, and travelling to; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Jul 8-Sep 5, 1982; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Oct 4-Nov 28, 1982; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Dec 27, 1982-Feb 20, 1983; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Mar 17-Apr 17, 1983 (part 1); exh. cat. pl.72 (col. illus.)
Literature: Lisa Turvey, "Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper: Volume One: 1956-1976," Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2014, p.357, D.1973.86 (col. illus.); Edward Ruscha, "Guacamole Airlines and other drawings by Edward Ruscha, Abrams, New York, 1980, pl.31 (col. illus.); Robert C. Morgan "Pastel, Juice and Gunpowder: The Pico Iconography of Ed Ruscha," Journal: A Contemporary Art Magazine (Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art) 3, no. 10 (Sep-Oct 1981), p.31; "My Kid Could Do That," Spy, June 1989, p.107 (illus.); Ed Ruscha, "They Called Her Styrene", Phaidon, London, 2000, n.p. (col. illus.); Robert Enright, "The Painted Whirred: Ed Ruscha's Spin on Language" (interview), Border Crossings 106 (May 2008), pp. 44-46
Registration: Registered by the Edward Ruscha studio under no. D1973.86
Reference: C16-14