Stains (E.B9)

One of 70 copies - signed & numbered. A fine example of the complete portfolio in the original box. Signed and numbered by the artist.

'Stains is a boxed set of single sheets of paper, done in 1969, and it's like a little treasure chest of overlooked things. Stains have always been scorned I guess, and it evolved out of my concepts of painting. I've always painted with a skin on a support, like paint on a canvas. And finally I got sick of doing it, and staining something, letting a wet material sink down into the fabric of the support—in this case paper—was the effort here and was my interest. The idea of using something that stains rather than a paint that sits on the surface of a canvas was my discovery for myself at the time. So there is everything from wine stains, coffee stains, L.A. tap water that's almost invisible—lots of 'em, lots of stains. I made a little laundry list of things that I think I wanted to see at that time, one was even sulfuric acid which eats a hole in the paper, and everything that I selected seemed to be right at the time. When I produced this thing, I remember buying a large quantity of this 100% rag content paper, and I got a call from the US government because it is the same kind of paper that would be used in counterfeiting, so I had a short-lived problem there, proving that I was not doing anything nefarious.' (Ed Ruscha).

Limited edition, one of 70 copies, signed and numbered in blue ink on the colophon, and stamp-numbered in black ink on each plate, square 4to (each sheet: 29.8 x 27.3 cm, Portfolio: 31.8 x 28.6 x 3.8 cm); the complete portfolio of 76 stains (Mixed Media), on Eagle Coupon Bond paper, including the additional stain on white silk moiré fabric boxed in the portfolio, with title, colophon and index pages, all loose as issued, contained in the original clamshell portfolio covered with black textured paper with embossed title in silver ink on the cover and spine.