Artist Ed Ruscha’s All-American Perspective

WSJ. Magazine Innovators: Art A life-spanning retrospective, at MoMA through Jan. 13, finally anoints him as one of the country’s most significant postwar artists By Kelly Crow | Photography by Mario Sorrenti for WSJ. Magazine Dec. 8, 2023 Tap story

For over six decades, Ruscha (pronounced “rew-SHAY”) has been making art that delights in the ambiguity and cultural anthropology of everyday language. 'Pay Nothing Until April' (2003); Ed Ruscha, Tate

Dada artists before him may have pasted letters from magazines and posters onto art that evoked ransom notes, but Ruscha pioneered the notion of elevating American colloquialisms to the realm of fine art. 'Honk' (1962); Ed Ruscha, Gagosian

Until him, few painters treated words themselves as worthy subject matter, a choice that curators say influenced generations of artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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In the early 1960s, he broke onto the art stage painting canvases festooned with simple, words he admired from childhood comics. 'Oof' (1962, reworked 1963); Ed Ruscha, The Museum of Modern Art, Denis Doorly

Collectors still pay a premium for these wordy, early experiments, including 1964’s Hurting the Word Radio #2 , in which he painted clamps that appear to be actually squeezing a couple of letters. In 2019, it sold at auction for $52.5 million. Christie's Images Ltd.

Ruscha’s oeuvre encompasses far more than mere wordplay, however. After World War II, a generation of young artists pivoted away from the bohemian garrets of Paris and looked to the bustling skyscrapers of New York for artistic inspiration.

Ruscha, who left Oklahoma in 1956 for far-off Los Angeles, sought out an entirely different America—a vast, spare landscape that was equally modern yet largely overlooked by the New York School. 'Blue Collar Trade School' (1992); Ed Ruscha, Whitney Museum of American Art/Scala/Art Resource, NY

The scenery Ruscha captured over the next six decades tended to stretch outward like the horizon, not up like those big-city skyscrapers. He painted industrial buildings standing starkly against cloudless skies; he painted fixtures of the highway, from gas stations to guardrails. 'The Old Tech-Chem Building' (2003); The Broad Art Foundation/Ed Ruscha

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While peers like Andy Warhol enshrined Hollywood starlets in Technicolor silkscreens, Ruscha painted the back of the Hollywood sign—a hint that he understood the American dream, but also its dystopian veneer, better than anyone. This fall, a life-spanning body of his work is on display at a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art , which finally anointed Ruscha as one of the country’s most significant postwar artists. ‘The Back of Hollywood‘ (1977); Ed Ruscha, Blaise Adilon

Ed Ruscha/Now Then , stretches across the museum’s entire top floor and includes more than 200 works that arc from his earliest wordplay paintings to re-creations of two Venice Biennale appearances to his more recent silhouette works, mountainscapes and portraits of wind-whipped U.S. flags. Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Ruscha may have once made a work titled I Dont Want No Retro Spective , but he showed up to MoMA’s opening reception in September ready for this one. 'I Dont Want No Retro Spective' (1979); Ed Ruscha, Robert McKeever, Gagosian, The Museum of Modern Art

Dressed in a white golf shirt, gray blazer and black bolo tie, Ruscha chomped on a piece of bubble gum, sipped a vodka soda and greeted everyone from Pamela Anderson to John Krasinski. He hugged artists he knew well, including Jeff Koons, Louise Lawler, Neil Jenney and Jonas Wood, who called Ruscha his hero. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

“It’s an avalanche of ideas,” Ruscha says of the show, “a big pileup.”

Ruscha says his work hinges mostly on his abiding curiosity about the passage of time—how the language and landscapes that matter to him alter or stay the same, and why. As far-ranging and coolly detached as his pieces may appear, much of his art is subtly biographical. ‘Annie, Poured From Maple Syrup' (1966); Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena), Ed Ruscha

“I like the idea that things are changing,” he says. “That’s not always negative.” Ruscha, shown drawing cartoons in 1951. Photo:Ruscha Studio Read the full story

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