“Sometimes found words are the most pure because they have nothing to do with you [...] I take things as I find them. A lot of these things come from the noise of everyday life."
—Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha’s So…[#1], is an arresting example of the artists career-defining combinations of text and image that capture a quintessentially American vernacular. As a Los Angeles-based artist, much of Ruscha’s work is revered for its ability to deftly translate an American state of mind, distilled into iconic visual cues such as the Hollywood Sign and Sunset Boulevard. In the present work, Ruscha conjures the intimacy of a Californian sunset as it pours through an unseen window, cinematically revealing a warm interior. Imposed over the scene is the wryly phrased word 'So...' which fluctuates between deadpan self-awareness and poetic ambiguity.
Ruscha’s commercial beginnings and instantly recognisable style position his corpus alongside postwar peers such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, his unique visual style bridging Pop and Conceptual art movements. Currently the focus of a major retrospective hosted by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Ed Ruscha / Now Then presents a comprehensive survey of the artist’s career, including over 200 works and tracking his landmark contributions to postwar American art. Much anticipated and critically acclaimed, the exhibition has cemented Ruscha’s reputation as one of the leading artists of his generation, emphasising his laconic ability to celebrate and interrogate American optimism with wit, perfectly captured in the open-ended interpretations of So…[#1].
