Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing - photo 1
Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing - photo 2
Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing - photo 3
Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing - photo 4
Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing - photo 5

Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing

Lot 85
08.12.2023 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 20 000
AuctioneerSotheby´s
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1111120
Lot 85 | Ruscha, Ed | Various Small Fires and Milk, inscribed to Joe Goode with an original drawing
Estimate value
$ 20 000 – 30 000
Ruscha, Ed
Various Small Fires and Milk. Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie and Simon, 1964

8vo. 16 sepia-toned black and white photographic illustrations. Original white card wrappers printed in black, original glassine dust-jacket; light soiling to wrappers, glassine lightly yellowed, partial loss to the front flap and front panel, a few additional short tears and chips.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed to Joe Goode "Ho ho ho / To Joe from Ed / Christmas 1964" with a drawing of Santa Claus, one of 400 copies.

Various Small Fires, Ruscha's second artist book, contains sepia-toned images of banal objects emitting flames — for example a matchbook, stove, lighter, and cigar. The terminal image depicts a glass of milk, a humorous end meant to soothe the heartburn.

The photograph of milk also presents an intriguing connection to the recipient of this book, Joe Goode (see the preceding lot for more background on Ruscha and Goode). Throughout his artistic career, Goode has returned to the milk bottle as a subject. He first started exploring the subject in the early 1960s, and one of his paintings of milk bottles was included in in the groundbreaking Pop Art exhibition New Painting of Common Objects (Pasadena Art Museum, 1962), where he exhibited alongside Ruscha. Given their close association, it is easy to see how they might have encouraged each other in their mutual embrace of the iconography of milk.

Santa Claus and milk — it doesn't get more wholesome than that.
Artist:Edward Ruscha (1937)
Auction house category:Prints, graphics, books
Address of auction Sotheby´s
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