Ed Ruscha: A Selection of Prints
The Greenfield Sacks Gallery
Bergmot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica
Hey cool post-modern art kids, you have just one week left to enjoy the Pop Art prints of Ed Ruscha at the Greenfield Sacks Gallery in Santa Monica’s haven for contemporary art, Bergamot Station. Ruscha’s textual “word paintings” are credited for the birth of the Pop Art movement, along with Warhol’s silk screened multiples and Lichtenstein’s comic reproductions.
Ruscha’s stark prints gain much of their notorious and sardonic satire from their simplicity. His works span multiple mediums, from photography and painting to print making as in the show, frequently featuring single words, phrases, or repetitions. This plurality of mediums and influences, however, ironically echoes the banality of LA life and the onslaught of text created by mass media, instead of the city’s rumored energy and potential. If his works seem at all dull or familiar, that is sort of the point.
Having lived, studied, and worked in Los Angeles for much of his life, Ruscha and his works are often associated with our city and its lifestyle. In many ways his reputation is inseparable from Los Angeles, especially with Sunset Blvd. as the subject for an ambitious group of photographs. There was even a massive-scaled mural of him on Hill Street, “Ed Ruscha Monument” by Kent Twitchell, which was unexpectedly and erroneously painted over in 2006; lawsuits ensued.
The Greenfield Sacks Gallery specializes in contemporary prints and drawings, hence the Ruscha show, which actually is paired with another father of Pop Art, the late Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg’s works also recall the plentitude of stuff and words in our modern landscape, but with an aesthetic of collage and plenty instead of starkness. Both the Ruscha and Rauschenberg shows will be closing on Saturday, August 23.
Image by Marshall Astor
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