Ed Ruscha Paintings

by Ed Ruscha, Adam Gopnik (Contributor)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, May 10 - June 15, 2002, Gagosian Gallery, New York. Includes essay, "Bones in the Ice Cream," by Adam Gopnik.

In a series the artist calls "mirror paintings", the stylized mountains, painted with their reflection, are emblazoned with palindromes and idiosyncratic witticisms such as "SEX AT NOON TAXES" and "SOLO GIGOLOS." The landscape and the text create a double-entendre, where the painting and its text mirror each other in a visual pun. The exhibition also includes a series of "fictional paintings" with anecdotes and imagined characters that offer a glimpse of seemingly mundane events.

53 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Edward Ruscha is a towering figure of American Pop Art whose multidisciplinary practice redefined the visual language of the late twentieth century. Born in Omaha and raised in Oklahoma City, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he was mentored by Robert Irwin and Emerson Woelffer. Rising to prominence in the early 1960s alongside the influential Ferus Gallery group, he gained international acclaim for his "word paintings"—monosyllabic oils like OOF, BOSS, and HONK—which isolated typography against monochromatic backgrounds, reflecting his background in commercial art and a fascination with the "deadpan" irreverence of the Pop movement. His work is inextricably linked to the vernacular of Southern California, capturing the sprawling aesthetics of Los Angeles through iconic depictions of the Hollywood sign, stylized gas stations, and continuous photographic surveys such as Every Building on the Sunset Strip. A master of diverse media, Ruscha has famously experimented with unconventional materials, including gunpowder, blood, axle grease, and various food products like chocolate syrup and caviar, to create works that bridge the gap between commercial graphics and fine art. His influence extends significantly into the "New Topographics" photography movement and conceptual art, challenging traditional views of the urban landscape by dispassionately documenting America’s suburban structures. In 1962, his work was featured in the groundbreaking New Painting of Common Objects exhibition, widely considered one of the first Pop Art surveys in America. Throughout his storied career, he has been the subject of major retrospectives at the world’s leading museums, including the Centre Pompidou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Ruscha has also contributed to public spaces through monumental commissions for the Getty Center and the Miami-Dade Public Library. In recognition of his enduring impact, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in both 1970 and 2005, and in 2013, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His artistic reach even touched popular culture, with his typeface "Boy Scout Utility Modern" and his collaboration on cover art for Paul McCartney and The Beatles. Beyond his own production, Ruscha has served as a trustee for the Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, underscoring his leadership within the arts community. His unique "cool gaze" remains a quintessential chronicler of the American West, blending the cinematic proportions of Hollywood with the mundane reality of the open road. Today, his works are held in premier permanent collections worldwide, cementing his legacy as a defining artist of the postwar era who transformed the way we read, see, and experience the modern environment.

Reviews

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a series of mountain motif paintings, the second section of this catalog contains paintings of books without any words in them, acrylic and ink on raw linen. Below them are different palindromes (e.g., "A Sun On USA"). It's a pressure drop for content overabundance, the aftermath of magnifying glass honed on the retina. I entertain the fantasy that by some crazy calculus, there's another half to what we're reading - a mirror-image half that manages to pull off an unreading.

Adam Gopnik's essay in this book is competitive, dense, and dastardly, and it's probably going to be impossible to find (Last I checked, this sucker was $200 on Amazon). There are about two dozen quotables, but what seems to be at stake is that the archetypal idea that "language and concepts and culture are so powerful they overwhelm things merely seen" has it wrong - it's the other way around.