“Fifty years from now, when there’s no such thing as a movie projection through celluloid, it will be a head-scratcher – people will say, What do these lines here mean? Today we still have some sense of identity with this picture, but it’s not going to be relevant in the future.”

—Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s The End #81, 2009, is a powerful final statement. Stark white capital letters sit against a smoky red background, punctuated by gray smudges and streaky white lines. These imperfections resemble dust particles and scratches on old films, evoking the aesthetics of classical Hollywood cinema, an enduring influence in Ruscha’s work. The titular text seems to almost glow, projecting its ominous message in a nearly three-dimensional manner against the otherwise flat picture plane. The artist first introduced the phrase “The End” into his works in 1982, and has revisited it repeatedly throughout his career, imbuing the phrase with a sense of renewal which is unique to his practice. The End #81 poignantly captures the fading allure of a once-glamorous era, highlighting the fleeting and mesmerizing space where the past and present meet.

Since the 1960s, Ruscha’s works have been informed by his fascination with Old Hollywood storytelling and American consumerism, both of which manifest in the present work. Growing up in Oklahoma watching black and white movies, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956, drawing inspiration from the city and its place at the center of the booming film industry. Recalling these movies, Ruscha fashioned The End #81 to mimic the final credit projects at the end of a classic movie. “If I’m influenced by the movies,” Ruscha notes, “it’s from way down underneath, not just on the surface. A lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words... the backgrounds are of no particular character. They’re just meant to support the drama.”ⁱ

“Ruscha’s The End exists at the end of such a movie cycle, where nuance meets its vanishing point and turns back. He dwells on imperfections as though they create new meaning. As though they will finally help us get over it or get on with it. The glitches play highly abstracted games of titillation, itching the self-consciousness that afflicts all late art with hints of other options. Of roads not taken, of lives to be lived.”

—Robert Mahoney

Beyond the cinematic references, The End #81 also meditates on the passage and eventual end of time. Projecting a familiar message into the context of the digital age, Ruscha prompts reflection on technological change and the shifting landscape of American culture. As noted by Ana Torok, “Ruscha’s fascination with the materiality of degraded film goes beyond a purely optical preoccupation; it also marks time. When committing this image to canvas, he was struck by the fact that at some point in the future, viewers unfamiliar with the analog medium will no longer comprehend what they are seeing.”ⁱⁱ Employing once-used visual language, the present work becomes a nostalgic time capsule, preserving the essence of a disappearing era. As Ruscha himself noted on the finality of The End works, “yes, that’s a powerful thing. It’s the end – here it is – the end. It's a powerful and final kind of thought.”ⁱⁱⁱ

ⁱ Ed Ruscha, quoted in Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004, p. 21.
ⁱⁱ Ana Torok, ”Hollywood Dreams,” Ed Ruscha / Now Then, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023, p. 230–231.
ⁱⁱⁱ Ed Ruscha, quoted in Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, San Francisco, 2016, p. 179.