I've recently been exploring the vast corpus of work produced by Ed Ruscha. Most of his work involves some sort of connection between words and art. Only Murders in the Building fans may know Ruscha from a print on the wall of Steve Martin's character's apartment: Nice, Hot Vegetables (see below).
Nice, hot vegetables are very nice, but, as you all might suspect, I'm in it for the Shakespeare.
One of Ruscha's projects was to design images for the then-newly-constructed main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library, particularly the images around its vast rotunda.
Inspiration struck, and Ruscha decided to us a line Claudius speaks in Hamlet:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (III.iv.____)
With that starting point, Ruscha seems to have flung himself into a creative frenzy. There are dozens and dozens of preliminary sketches and finished pieces, all of them astounding.
For example, here's what the rotunda looks like:
That's amazing enough, but here are several other versions of the piece as flat canvases:
Of course, some of you may still prefer
. . . but my heart goes out to the Shakespeare.
Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
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