Ed Ruscha Speaks to the Eye
By Harriet Zinnes
The curator Margit Rowell has done it again —organized a splendid exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This time it is the first museum survey of the drawings of the artist Ed Ruscha, and the title of the exhibition comes from the very words of the artist: "Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors." The words roll, they evoke — as do the works themselves. They articulate essential Americana: life, habits, indulgences, spirit, and provocations. Here we have the artist’s photographic vision, a reaction against the Abstract Expressionists.And words as opposed to things were his very matter. "I like facts," he wrote, "facts.…The closest representation to an apartment house in Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), is a photograph, nothing else; not a drawing, because that becomes someone else’s vision of what it is, and this is the camera’s eye, the closest delineation of that subject." And so, from the early 60s words, as opposed to things, became his subject matter. If you think thrusting such words on a canvas as "Trust," "Cherry," "eye infection" don’t have a visual impact, think again.
– Ed Ruscha’s drawings showed at the Whitney Museum of American Art through September 26, 2004.
