(born in London in 1958)
Ruth with Cigarette 2, 2005, signed on the overlap Julian Opie, dye on nylon on canvas, 245 x 169 cm, on stretcher

Provenance:
Private Collection, Japan

Exhibited:
Kumamoto 2015, POP ART 1960s - 2000s. Contemporary Art Museum 25 July - 27 September 2015

Catalogue Raisonné:

www.julianopie.com/artwork/painting/2005/666

“The genre of the portrait evidences a particular interest in the other. Except that the other is always oneself. What the portraitist renders is not merely a human being; a society woman, businessman, actress, colleague, etc. With his synthesising art Julian Opie excels in drawing out an idea of general application from the individual, and that is his great achievement: His manner encourages a reduction and concentration of means and marks, but the portrait is not reduced to that. What is important is the constant adaptation to the spirit of the time, which is the strong point of his works, and the use of a symbolic physiognomy that has a generic value, rather than the specific features of the person who appears on any of the supports that he so skilfully presents. What it probably comes down to in the end is not exclusively a question of a portrait but of the ideas of the age, of an aesthetic ideal and generic typologies that function more like a socio-artistic database.”

www.julianopie.com: Julie Morere: People, Portraits and Landscapes. Essay from ‘Impersonality and Emotion in Twentieth-Century British Arts’, J.M. Ganteau & C. Reynier (editors), published by Université Paul-Valery Montpellier III

The works of Julian Opie are based on photographs that, through extreme digital manipulation, are reduced to the most important features of the portrayed person, whereby the stylistic idiom of black contours, which is so characteristic for Opie, is developed in a particular way. The human eye usually takes a much closer look at a painted portrait than at an actual person, since the painter consciously focuses his attention on the characteristic features of the respective face, in order to put the individuality of the depicted person in the foreground. In spite of the reduction to the essential, Julian Opie individualises the portrayed, by giving them a personal attribute, with glasses, watches, bangles, and clothes.
The five-part Ruth series, from which “Ruth with cigarette, 2” is taken, shows “Ruth” as a formally reduced figure, with black outlines, in five completely different manifestations, but always smoking a cigarette. What is special about the portrait “Ruth with cigarette, 2” is her posture. In contrast to conventional portraits, usually rendered en face or in profile, Ruth, without torsion of the upper body, is turned to the side, and looks fixedly at the viewer over her right shoulder. With her arms folded in front, she does not allow a clear view of her upper body, like the other images in the series, rather the viewer is limited to looking at the face with the glasses and at the act of smoking.