Material #1: Ed Ruscha's City
NYC’s Museum of Modern Art has been showing an exhibition of Ed Ruscha’s paintings. Throughout his work, Ruscha plays with the interaction of words and images, and experiments with different materials. City was one of many of his pieces that jumped out at me.
As the exhibition description accompanying the painting says:
In 1966 Ruscha sparked a “romance with liquids”. Continuing his material exploration of language, he began rendering words as viscous puddles. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture”, he stated. “Almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.” Splashed across gradient backdrops, words are caught in a moment of legibility before their presumed dissolution.
In another piece, Stains, 75 sheets of paper are stained with different materials. Among them are Los Angeles tap water, Pacific Ocean salt water, gunpowder, candlewax, an ant, beer, grass, Coca-Cola, and rose petal.
*********
Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.