Ruth Smoking (complete set) Julian Opie

JULIAN OPIE, RUTH SMOKING (COMPLETE SET), SIGNED SCREEN PRINT, EDITION OF 50, 2006

Ruth Smoking is a set of prints that features a half-length portrait of an art collector living in Geneva who commissioned the portrait.

Ruth Smoking is indicative of Opie’s interest in Ukiyo-e, a genre of Japanese woodblock prints from the 18th and 19th centuries that often depicted female beauties not meant for exhibition. Opie’s particular interest in Ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro comes through in these portraits of Ruth through his choice of eroticised subject matter and use of flattened colour, cropped format and simplified shapes.

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.