‘‘I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.’’
—Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha is one of America’s most influential and successful living artists and is known for his iconic ‘word’ paintings. His distinctive body of work – falling between the Pop and Conceptual art movements – challenges preconceived verbal and visual constructs. Metro Mattresses is one of three ‘word’ works on paper executed for the series and exhibition Ed Rusha: Metro Mattresses at Sprüth Magers, Berlin in 2016. Commercially trained like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in magazine publishing and advertising, Ruscha’s work is arresting in its striking immediacy and graphic simplicity. His idiosyncratic artistic practice has earned him the honour of retrospective exhibitions of his works on paper at institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles in 1998 and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2004. The present work epitomises Ruscha’s clever manipulation of text and image; the work loudly reads in a quasi-Garamond font:
METRO
MATTRESSES
Smeared across the muted red background, the text speeds horizontally across the work. This echoes the experience of glimpsing barely perceptible signs from fast-moving cars, or the metro. After all, the work recalls Ruscha’s interest in the vernacular of the American West: billboard and highway signs, gas stations and movie credits. Inspired by Dada and Surrealist jeux de mots, the artist is known for his witty, onomatopoeic, polysemous, and discordant typography such as ‘OOF’, ‘BOSS’ and ‘Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills’. In the present work, the non-hierarchical handling and alliteration of the two words ‘Metro Mattresses’ implies congruence to an otherwise meaningless construction. Here, Ruscha introduces a compelling interplay between the public and private sphere. The disparate ‘Metro’ and ‘Mattresses’ do however coalesce in their functionality, banality, and as they are repositories for travel, whether physical or in dreams.
‘‘[Ruscha is] an inspiring example of what it means for an artist to be original in a very specific, even limited way, and to be so true to his originality that he is able to try something of everything.’’
—Roberta Smith
Executed in 2015, the present work marks a return to the technique Ruscha developed in the late 1960s for his small series of ‘liquid works’ where the text appears smudged, smeared, and blurred; the artist has developed a rigorous and careful technique to achieve this effect. After priming the ground by binding dry pigments to the paper and preparing the stencils, the artist sprays white acrylic paint through the stencil in a technique he calls ‘reverse-stencilling’.i The artist then draws a sheet of high-density foam over the acrylic paint, producing this smeared effect. The motionless and matte background – Ruscha believes backgrounds ought to be like ‘stage settings’ – contrasts with the traversing sheen of the acrylic text.ii ‘It makes you dizzy’, Ruscha stated in reaction to the information overload the digital age has ushered into society: Does this then explain his return to the ‘liquid word’ works?iii Ruscha’s greatness lies in the continually fresh and keen observation he brings to our ever-changing society. ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN is currently on show at the Museum of Modern Art until 13 January 2024. It is the artist’s most comprehensive retrospective to date and showcases Ruscha’s enduring art-historical importance and legacy.