The Storybook Career of Ed Ruscha

During the 1980s, I briefly got to know Ed Ruscha. My San Francisco gallery, Acme Art, mounted a show of his gunpowder “Ribbon Letter” drawings, affording me a chance to study his work. I learned about his many contributions to art history including the prominent use of language as subject matter. His invention of the “artist book” opened up new venues for many future artists. He’s also largely credited with introducing humor to art. I recall that one of his few detractors, the great Ivan Karp, once told me something to the effect of Ruscha being “the only Leo Castelli Gallery artist of little significance.” Perhaps Ivan, who was Castelli’s gallery director for a decade, resented that Ruscha was the only Californian painter on the roster.

Ruscha’s Los Angeles residency seemed to work against him for a long time. Back then, artists based in California weren’t taken seriously by their New York counterparts. As a West Coast colleague once said to me, “It’s as if New York thinks our I.Q.’s are forty points lower than theirs.”

During the 1980s, I recall running into Ed Ruscha in SoHo. At the time, New York’s Museum of Modern Art had just purchased their first Ruscha canvas. It was one of his classic paintings from the 1960s titled, OOF. When I congratulated him on getting into MoMA’s permanent collection, he responded in his typical laconic fashion, “Yeah, I’m a twenty-year overnight success.”

A few years later, I made an appointment to meet Ed Ruscha at his Venice (California) studio. We were planning to go out to lunch to discuss a potential commission. I was friendly at the time with the corporate art curator at the Southland Corporation (parent company of the 7-11 convenience store chain), who wanted Ed to paint the lone word, “Reggae.” For some reason, I must have been nervous, because I pulled into Ed’s driveway and somehow managed to lock my keys in the car - with the engine running. Ed got a good laugh from it, as we called the AAA auto club to come out and unlock the door.

With all of the demand for Ruscha’s paintings, it wasn’t long until his prints began to follow. As everyone knows, the classic Ed Ruscha prints are his four Standard Stations and Hollywood. These are now considered “top twenty” prints in the history of contemporary printmaking.

Underrated Gems in Ruscha's Print Portfolio

However, there are almost too many other first-rate Ruscha prints to mention here, some of which remain undervalued - or at least fairly valued.

1. Sin With Olive (1970): Here, Ruscha screened a ribbon letter word which spells out “Sin” and offset it with a small green martini olive (complete with a red pimento) at the bottom of the composition. This print is relatively affordable because of its large edition size (150). Yet, its imagery encompasses everything Ruscha is about as an artist.
2. IF (2000): This large-scale lithograph (56 cm x 91.5 cm), in an edition of 75, that captures the enigmatic nature of his art. Ruscha’s choice of words always feels elusive. In an interview, he once confirmed that he often chooses his words or expressions based on random events. He might be driving in his car, listening to the radio, when he’ll hear a word that will resonate with him - and the next thing you know it finds its way into his work.
3. Insects Portfolio (1972): These obscure screenprints were released in 1972 in editions of 100. Each of the five different images depict clusters of realistically drawn tiny insects. My personal favorite (and a print I once owned) was called Pearl Dust Combination. Here, Ruscha drew a combination of ants, cockroaches, and flies scattered throughout the composition. The result is a work which draws you in so you can identify the bugs, while admiring the artist’s creative thought process, and ultimately smiling at the absurdity of it all.

In summary, no serious contemporary print collection is complete without one (or more) graphic works by Ed Ruscha. Whether you are assembling a Pop Art collection, a group of Minimalist holdings, or a simply a home full of high-quality prints, there’s always a place for his work. In the future, Ruscha will go down in art history as a highly important artist. He’s likely to rank just ahead of such Pop giants as Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist - and just below Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. And that’s saying something.