A missing Ruscha (lost Lost)
Pastel [, graphite] and gunpowder on paper [in natural maple frame]
11.75 x 29 in 14.75 x 31.5 in
1972 2024For reasons that now escape me, I found myself in the Missing Works section of an artist’s website. An artist with a section for missing works must churn this stuff out and here’s me, lucky to make an object a year, I think. There’s a drawing titled Lost in this Missing Works section. It’s titled Lost and it’s a drawing of white paper strips spelling the word lost atop a purpletomagenta gradient and the drawing is missing. Lost is missing. It’s filed under Missing Works, somehow standing in as its own missing poster and aware it would eventually go missing. An artwork with the title Lost under Missing Works. Do the words lost and missing denote different things? I ask. I stumble on this image of this missing drawing as I’m feeling lost, but not missing. If the drawing is remade, resurrected even, is it still missing or is it now found? I ask. No. It’ll be a drawing of an image of a drawing by another artist, I think. If it is a drawing of an image of a drawing, the signature—hardly legible and blurry in the image provided on the artist’s site—therefore can’t be classified a forgery, but is actually a drawing of a photo of a signature on a drawing of another artist. A drawing of a photo of a drawing and a drawing with a drawing of a photo of a signature on a drawing. Stay with me. Where do I add in the gunpowder? where do I buy the gunpowder? why the hell is gunpowder in here? I ask. I must say no drawing has eluded me as this one. I mean that as I worked on it, I would encounter some issue or error that gave me no choice but to go back to square one. Over and over and over again in what seemed a never-ending loop. The studio was covered in pink dust; everything was pink—gunpowder everywhere. Lost wants to stay missing it seems, I think. After these attempts to replicate this image of a missing drawing containing a drawing of a photo of a signature on a drawing, I take the final version of the missing Lost to a frame shop here in Los Angeles. I unwrap and place it on the carpeted, waist-high table. The framer looks down, Ah . . . well, Mr Ruscha usually goes with a natural maple, he says, I think. The drawing is still missing. I’m still lost.