JULIAN OPIE, RUTH SMOKING 4, RUTH SMOKING SERIES, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 50, 2006
Taken from Julian Opie’s Ruth Smoking series, Ruth Smoking 4 is a screen print from 2006 that shows a three-quarter length portrait of the subject in a red bra, holding a cigarette in her left hand. The portrait is depicted in Opie’s graphic style, characteristic of his other works during the mid-2000s that use bold outlines and bright colour.
An important aspect for Opie in creating the commissioned portraits of Ruth, an art collector living in Geneva, was the fact that the sitter smoked and had long smooth hair. The element of smoking offered Opie the opportunity to animate this image with wisps of rising smoke in further iterations of the subject, thus allowing him to represent a sense of time through the static portrait.
Inspired by the woodblock prints of Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro, as well as early Renaissance painters such as Giovanni Bellini and Fra Angelico, Opie deliberately frames these images of Ruth as three-quarter length portraits to place his work in a historical, painterly context. In referencing historical, classic poses through the medium of computer drawing programmes and photography, Opie aims to distance model and viewer, placing the model in a fictional framework. This fictional role is then recognised as a type by the viewer, allowing for a multitude of interpretations.
Read more about Ruth by Julian Opie.
ABOUT JULIAN OPIE
British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.
