“I wanted to expand my ideas about materials and the value they have.”
—Ed Ruscha
Fruit-Metrecal Hollywood sees Ruscha merge two of his characteristic artistic attributes, utilizing unconventional, organic materials to render an extremely horizontal interpretation of the iconic Hollywood sign. Overtly panoramic, Fruit Metrecal Hollywood emphasizes Ruscha’s continued view that horizontality and landscape are synonymous notions – in this case the Hollywood hills as well as the multisyllabic word “Hollywood."
At this point in his printmaking career, Ruscha was no stranger to printing with unconventional pigments, many of them edible. By 1971, the artist had already experimented with running coffee, raw egg, Pepto-Bismol, baked beans, Branston Pickle, and caviar, among others, through silkscreens, notably in his 1969 portfolio Stains. While outlandish in nature, the choice of these materials was completely intentional. Metrecal was a diet drink, and Ruscha’s use of this substance to depict the Hollywood sign evokes the vanities that might be associated with an L.A. existence. In addition to toying with different types of jam (strawberry and boysenberry) before settling upon grape and apricot, Ruscha tried printing with Sego chocolate, Bosco chocolate syrup, and salmon before arriving at the desired combination of ingredients that became the recipe for Fruit Metrecal Hollywood. Eschewing the typical framework of art conservation, Ruscha welcomed the possibility that these organic materials may change over time as part of the artwork’s natural life.
