Between the Scenes

Dismayed by what he saw to be the poor quality of writing in the ubiquitous text-and-image combinations of Conceptual art, Ruppersberg embarked on a diverse series of language-based works in the early 1970s, ranging from longhand copies of Walden and The Picture of Dorian Gray (the latter on twenty six-foot-square canvases) to photo-narratives that employed the "layering techniques of stories and novels." The title of this work refers to Ruppersberg's position as a Los Angeles artist existing between the "scenes" of Hollywood and the art world; the blurring of illusion and reality peculiar to Tinseltown permeates the structure of the piece, in which the reversed credits hint that we are the movie and the lurid Technicolor images seen beyond are "reality," with the artist negotiating the space between the two. Cryptically titled This Is It, the imaginary film is also set between the two "scenes," cast with silent-era actors but improbably brought to the screen by a Who's Who of Dada and Surrealist artists from the same historical moment. Each frame is accompanied by a typed caption that functions like the explanatory titles in silent films yet is wittily undercut with a terse, enigmatic "self-explanatory." The sinister meaning of the film's title becomes clear with the revelation in the final frame that the little-known Surrealist Jacques Vaché is its director; Vaché's fame today rests solely with his proposal of double suicide to a friend (here represented by Ruppersberg with a candy-filled gun to the temple) because "to die alone is boring."