Out of Sync

Images are carried across time and geographies, and through cultures, and peoples. Some take longer than others to land. These echoes and refractions are favored in museums and libraries with a wide and sweeping scope. One can argue that it only took 189 years and a good dose of chance and luck for the distant gesture of a Japanese woman to produce the shadow of a rabbit on the surface of a Ruscha print.

Woman Making Rabbit Shadow for Small Boy, 1807

 

Ryūryūkyo Shinsai, Woman Making Rabbit Shadow for Small Boy, 1807, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift in memory of Mary Thayer Gruys, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

 

Rabbit, 1986

 

Edward Ruscha, Rabbit, 1986, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of The Jane & Marc Nathanson Family Foundation, © Edward J. Ruscha IV, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA