Edward Ruscha has long been an influential voice in postwar American art. Though he emerged at a time when a number of movements were appearing on the US scene, he is not associated with any one group. Instead, Ruscha brings to his work a range of ideas from Surrealism, Pop, and Conceptual Art. A prolific innovator and a keen student of popular culture, the artist has created a body of paintings, drawings, prints, books, photographs, and films that is uniquely American in both subject and sensibility.
Training in Commercial Art, Move to Los Angeles
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Oklahoma City, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study commercial art. By the 1960s, he had turned to the fine arts, especially painting. An important influence was Jasper Johns, whose early paintings often combined mundane imagery and language. Unlike Johns, however, Ruscha focused on subjects identified with his adopted city. As an Oklahoman, he was able to see Los Angeles through the eyes of an outsider, and for many, his work embodies the unique mix of popular culture, illusion, and nostalgia that underlies the city’s unique ethos. He had his first solo show in 1963, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, an important venue for young artists from Southern California.
Use of Language, Artist’s Books, Hollywood, Standard Station
Language is almost always the point of departure for Ruscha’s work. Often, isolated words or phrases are his subject, as in the painting Steel (1967–1969), in which the word seems to be formed from puddles of liquid. Other works include short, iconic phrases or brand names: Hollywood (1968) depicts the sign that sits high in the hills above Los Angeles, while Standard Station (Red) (1966) shows a monumental gas station set against a fiery sunset. Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) and Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) are two of the accordion-fold books Ruscha made that document the city’s architectural landscape. In all of these works, the influence of his training in layout, lettering, and illustration is visible, as well as his curiosity about Los Angeles’ built environment.
Experiments with Materials, Printmaking
In the early 1970s, Ruscha put aside his traditional artists’ pigments and began using organic materials in his paintings, drawings, and prints. He tried caviar, chewing tobacco, Pepto-Bismol, bourbon, chocolate, rose petals, castor oil, spinach, Metrecal, gunpowder, and a host of other substances. The Walker’s collection includes an example of his self-published portfolio Stains (1969), 75 works on paper stained with traces of animal, vegetable, mineral, and chemical materials.
Influence of Cinema, Public Commissions
Ruscha has said that, “like everyone else in LA,” he is a frustrated film director. While he has made two films of his own—Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975)—the influence of the cinema can be more consistently seen in his two-dimensional works. Words hover on a monochrome background like film credits; horizontal formats mimic a widescreen projection; shadowy black-and-white silhouettes suggest grainy stills from a film noir. And like films, Ruscha’s works are stories often told through the juxtaposition of language and image. His telegraphic works lend themselves to large-scale installations such as Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today (2014), a hand-painted mural installed temporarily on the side of an apartment building next to New York City’s High Line.
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