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Ruth Smoking 3 - Signed Print by Julian Opie 2006 - MyArtBroker

Ruth Smoking 3
Signed Print

Julian Opie

Price data unavailable

AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

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Medium: Screenprint

Edition size: 50

Year: 2006

Size: H 121cm x W 80cm

Signed: Yes

Format: Signed Print

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Julian Opie's Ruth Smoking 3 (signed) is a screenprint from 2006, estimated to be worth between £3,750 and £5,500. This artwork has been sold twice at auction since its initial sale on 6th June 2018. Over the past five years, the hammer price has remained consistent, with an average annual growth rate of 0%. The edition size of this work is limited to 50.

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Auction Results

Auction DateAuction HouseLocation
Hammer Price
Return to Seller
Buyer Paid
September 2020Sotheby's Online United Kingdom
June 2018Phillips London United Kingdom

Meaning & Analysis

Amidst a contemporary world saturated with information, Opie presents us with an image stripped down to the bare minimum components that make up a portrait. Ruth Smoking is rendered in a decidedly depersonalised visual language. The element of smoking offered Opie the opportunity to animate this image with smoke in further iterations of the subject, thus allowing him to not represent a story but a sense of time through a static portrait.

Producing a computer generated image that uses flat, saturated colour and simplified shapes, Opie mimics the visual language of mass media and advertising. Ruth Smoking 3 also plays into this idea through depicting a stereotypical image of the ‘ideal’ woman as found in magazines, television and film. By rendering the figure with minimal facial features by which to determine who the sitter is, Opie forces the viewer to consider why they find this image so alluring and what constitutes attractiveness.