Highway, text fonts influence artist’s prints

Natalia Ciolko

Daily Texan Staff

Published: Thursday, April 2, 2009

Updated: Thursday, April 2, 2009

 

Photo courtesy of Kate Simon 

Modern artist Ed Ruscha will speak at the Harry Ransom Center on his life and work tonight at 7 p.m. 

When my dad visited recently, I placed American modern artist Ed Ruscha’s retrospective (titled “I Don’t Want No Retro Spective”) within reach of the toilet.

He went in, emerged what seemed hours later and handed the book to me with a grunt. I asked him what he thought.

“More of that pop art shit.”

But is this pop? Painter and printmaker Ed Ruscha, is often mentioned in the same breath as artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, but his work departs from theirs in its lack of agenda. While their work implies a conversation with the society at large, Ruscha always seems to be in conversation with himself.

His very first book, “Twentysix Gasoline Stations,” draws parallels to the Beat movement of the 1960s by using the interstate highway as an icon of wandering discovery and freedom. Ruscha’s own journey between his Oklahoma City origins to and from Los Angeles was the source of the images, and a sense of openness and emptiness still defines his work.

His prints and paintings, which often use text as their focus, are cooly executed but loaded with meaning, different for each person who looks at them. The visual impact of the letterforms is as important as the words they create, forcing multiple readings of the paintings. They’re as frustratingly enigmatic as the man himself, which is what keeps you coming back. (After reading a volume of his interviews, you’re left with more questions than answers.)

Ruscha was well-known by his mid-20s, though he has always relished the artistic “freedom to insult people or assault people,” he never resorts to spectacle.

A fan of chili, country music and open spaces, Ruscha acts more the lonesome cowboy than L.A. art star. Today he works in a Venice Beach studio, with more than 30 works sitting in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s permanent collection.

Ruscha is speaking tonight at the Harry Ransom Center on the topics of his life and work.

The talk begins at 7 p.m., and doors will open 30 minutes in advance. A webcast will be available on the center’s Web site at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu.

Below is a Q&A with the artist, a rare display of artistic cooperation.

The Daily Texan: You once said “success means death,” a surprising remark for a Walt Disney fan. How do you feel about success now?

Ed Ruscha: That is a drastic thing to say. Did I actually say that? Nevertheless, I think success can bite or not bite, the latter being much better. We know one thing, it’s an illusion.

DT: Was there ever an art form you couldn’t conquer or never cared to try?

ER: I never cared to try sculpture but often thought that even flat paper and books and paintings are still three-dimensional, so that makes them sculpture.

DT: Is there a book idea on your mind now, and will you tell us about it?

ER: I’ve had a long-standing dream to make a book out of the novel, “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac, maybe some day.

DT: What are you working on? Reading? Listening to?

ER: I am always painting, drawing. Reading “The Life of Edgar Allen Poe” and listening to blues singer Sleepy John Estes.

DT: If you would, tell us a scene from your first teaching job in 1969.

ER: I taught for one year at UCLA and regretted the time away from my studio. I envied people who could teach art and finally, the best students seemed to be the skeptics.

DT: What’s your personal motto?

ER: Do unto others as ... no, kidding!

DT: What’s your studio’s No. 1 rule?

ER: No. 1 rule is that there are no rules.

DT: What advice to student artists would you offer?

ER: Be influenced by things you don’t like.