McDonalds Pickup 1970

Ralph Goings painted this picture of McDonalds, likely from a photograph, and it's a real meditation on observation and light. The colors are flat and even, they’re like color photographs, but the hand is evident. Look at the way he renders the truck parked outside the McDonald's. It's as though he's trying to get the exact shade of off-white, of its shadow in the light, its reflection. There’s something about the way he’s chasing the real, or rather chasing the reproduction of the real, that I find so interesting. It’s an image of art making as a kind of meticulous, almost obsessive process. When I look at this, I think of Ed Ruscha, in his deadpan depictions of American life. They’re both so interested in the everyday, but also in the way we see it, and in the ways it’s already been reproduced. It’s a copy of a copy, and that’s where the meaning is.