Jim Eller (aka James A. Eller)

American, b. 1943

Rat Garage
1962

Metal and rubber
11.5 x 24.875 x 16.25 in.
Gift of the Kathryn C. Wanlass Foundation
2009.81

Jim Eller’s 1962 assemblage Rat Garage has two components: a metal multicolored toy parking garage and, in place oftoy cars, bright pink rubber rats. Following the precedent established by Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, both garage and rats are commercially manufactured products, selected and purchased by the artist rather than fashioned by his own hand. But unlike the ordinary commercial items favored by Duchamp, Eller’s toys are highly charged representations, sharing qualities with art even before he juxtaposed the disparate objects. Like classic pop art but even more so, the resulting artwork is so disarming, so seemingly innocent, that it effectively masks the disruptive critique of authorship and originality lurking behind its sunny affect.

Eller was nineteen years old and living in Los Angeles when he made Rat Garage. The young artist worked feverishly in this vein for one year, becoming as he did a favorite of the legendary curator Walter Hopps. In 1963 Hopps presented the retrospective exhibition By or of Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy at the Pasadena Art Museum to great acclaim. But by then, Eller, like Duchamp before him, had ceased making art, leaving Rat Garage in the curator’s care before walking away. Hopps saw to it that even in his absence, Eller’s work would be included in important exhibitions and publications, thereby ensuring a place for Rat Garage in the history of California modernism.

Tom Jimmerson

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This object has the following keywords:

• assemblage
• Rats
• service stations - Establishments that primarily sell gasoline, lubricating oils, and other merchandise, such as tires and batteries, for motor vehicles and that often also perform minor repair work. For buildings or parts of buildings where motor vehicles are parked or housed, usually temporarily, use "garages."
• toys

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Bang! Thwack! Plop! Comics: An Influence on Contemporary Art , 6/14/2011 - 7/26/2012
• A Matter of Taste: Art, Kitsch, and Culture , 1/23/2016 - 5/7/2016
• Collecting on the Edge , 9/15/2018 - 5/4/2019
• Collecting on the Edge Part II Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art , 1/17/2019 - 5/4/2019

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