Modern and contemporary art star Ed Ruscha is known for his conceptual, pop-
style, absurd, and sometimes wonder- fully baffling explorations of our national landscape and mythology. The country’s western region — with its long-stretching highways, Pacific sun- sets, and Hollywood iconography — fig- ures big in his painting and photography. Ed Ruscha and the Great Ameri- can West, put together by the Fine Arts Museums, contains 80-plus works that illustrate Ruscha’s interest in the West as both a romanticized land of possibility and a real place changing with the times. The show includes works inspired by road trips on Route 66 — gas stations are a favorite Ruscha subject — and by the Southern California that Ruscha has long called home. Featured works in- clude pictures of the Hollywood sign and “word paintings” by the artist. The latter contain Ruscha’s signature disjointed mix of language, lettering, meaning, and backgrounds whose lighting suggests traditional American landscape painting and its aim for the mythic. In another work, the words “The End” may refer to
the old-movie phrase or, perhaps, some- thing darker. The man has a way with mystery.
— Anita Katz
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