Untitled IV
Untitled IV
Signed Print
Ed Ruscha
30 x 30cm, Edition of 35, Intaglio, 2004
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Meaning & Analysis
Untitled IV is a 2004 intaglio print by Ed Ruscha from the series Blank Signs, signed and issued in an edition of 35. A stack of three blank signs stands on a single post in a hazy, empty landscape.
The three signs are drawn as white rectangles of decreasing size, placed one above another on a post that continues down to the ground. The sky is a pale, uniform grey. The landscape below is a thin band of line drawing that describes scrub, tracks and a distant horizon. Compared with its companion print Untitled I, the composition is more restrained, with one vertical element placed centrally in an almost empty field. The effect is of a road sign in a place with no traffic, the sign’s job of giving directions left unfulfilled. Ruscha has used the American roadside as a subject since the 1960s, in photographic books and paintings of gas stations. The blank signs belong to that line of inquiry while removing the lettering that usually defines it. The softness of the image is typical of the series, in which the tonal ground is printed from an aquatint-like surface and the line is fine and delicate.
