Stains: Leather Dye (Shinola)
1969
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
leather dye on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 30 × 27.31 cm (11 13/16 × 10 3/4 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Collectors Committee
Accession Number
2013.60.1.32
Art Historical Context
Ed Ruscha's *Stains: Leather DyeShinola)* (1969) is a playful yet profound entry in the artist's innovative "Stains" portfolio created during the height of Pop and Conceptual Art in late-1960s America. Ruscha, a Los Angeles-based artist famous for his deadpan word paintings and photographic books, here subverted traditional notions of painting by treating everyday stains as finished artworks. This small-scale piece on wove paper—measuring just 30 × 27.31 cm—captures the cultural zeitgeist of consumerism and irony, transforming a humble shoe polish like Shinola into a medium for artistic expres...
About the Artist
Ed Ruscha
Edward Ruscha, born Edward Joseph Ruscha IV on December 16, 1937, in Omaha, Nebraska, grew up in Oklahoma City after his family relocated there in 1941. From a young age, he was drawn to cartooning, supported by his mother, and his early artistic spark was nurtured amid the American Midwest before he moved to Los Angeles in 1956. There, he enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute (now California In...