| | |  Vallarta Living | Art Talk | July 2008 
Art Exhibit: Works by Ed Ruscha at the Portland Art Museum
 Brian Libby - The Oregonian
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| | "Azteca" by Ed Ruscha | | |
As a pioneering figure of Pop Art who first gained wide critical notices in the 1960s, Ed Ruscha's place in history is alongside such contemporaries as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Wayne Thiebaud. But unlike those late artists, the 71-year-old Ruscha is still going strong, as demonstrated by his new exhibit at the Portland Art Museum's Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. With only four works on display, this is far from a major show or retrospective. Even so, it's clear that Ruscha's gift for conjuring simple, bold graphic forms is undiminished.
Born in Oklahoma but residing in Los Angeles for most of his life, Ruscha was trained as a commercial artist in the 1950s and for years designed layouts for Artforum magazine. Pop Art's epiphany was perfect for his style: appropriating the forms and insignias of commercial culture and advertising into more serious artwork that nevertheless retained a sense of inquiry and playfulness. For Ruscha, art was more of a personal exercise, as it was for the detached Warhol.
Many of his most celebrated images, such as 1963's masterful "Standard Station, Amarillo Texas" or 1968's "Hollywood" (neither of which are in this show), are based on real places he visited and lived in.
That same graphic designer's sense of clarity and boldness can be seen in a pair of 2007 paintings in the current show, "Azteca" and "Azteca In Decline," each of which, at over 27 feet long, occupies an entire wall.
"Azteca" is based on graffiti that Ruscha encountered along a wall in Mexico near the great pyramids at Teotihuacan. It looks like a rainbow-colored searchlight, moving diagonally across the plane (a Ruscha trademark) in triangular swatches of red, green and blue, with an illusion of the action continuing beyond the canvas. All that's missing is a corporate brand in the rainbow's center, which probably would have existed if this were a work of Ruscha's from 45 years ago. But the artist has changed with the times, recognizing society is today more weary of ubiquitous corporate branding.
For "Azteca," Ruscha reproduced the Mexican wall of his memory down to its blemishes from erosion and spray paint. The work doesn't necessarily transform an everyday object like Warhol famously did with Campbell's soup cans, Thiebaud with slices of pie or even Ruscha himself with gas stations and signage. Viewed by itself, "Azteca" instead recalls the documentary work of Ruscha's photography. But viewed in relation to "Azteca In Decline," where these same forms are deconstructed and deflated into sagging blobs of color, it's a more transporting experience.
Graffiti and wall paintings are as old as humanity itself, dating back to cave paintings by our hairier ancestors. But seen together, "Azteca" and "Azteca In Decline" also act as topical political commentary. As the 1990s dot-com economic boom gave way to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - and later the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions - Ruscha is far from the only one to have wondered if the United States is in decline just like the Aztecs, Romans or Ottomans before us. These works aren't Ruscha's first stab at such commentary. His 10-painting cycle, "Course of Empire," exhibited at the 2005 Venice Biennale, similarly expressed the artist's anxieties about the fate of the nation and the world.
While the two "Azteca" paintings dominate the show with their massive scale and color, two other works demonstrate Ruscha's longtime use of organic materials. "New Wood/Old Wood" (2007), recently added to the Portland Art Museum's permanent collection, is just what its title describes: a strikingly realistic print depicting two planks of wood with subtly differing grains, tones and marks. Although far from a career-defining piece, there is beauty in its simplicity.
The final piece, 1972's "Spread," consists of two companion framed paintings made with gunpowder and tobacco, with a booklike page in each image including the title word. This is closer to vintage Ruscha, and made in an earlier era than the exhibit 's other three works.
While he'll always be associated with early Pop Art, there is something more earnest underscoring Ruscha's works here compared to that genre's inclination toward irony, celebrity worship and cartoon-like embellishment. Ruscha continues to make everyday surroundings of the post-World War II American West into a kind of Technicolor mythology.
Works by Ed Ruscha
Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.; $10 adults, $9 seniors/students |
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