Ed Ruscha
BEGIN ANYWHERE, 2024
Color hand pulled lithograph
Image: 11 x 19 inches
Sheet: 15.5 x 22 inches
21/60
Available at VFA
I just happened to paint words like someone else paints flowers.
– Ed Ruscha
For nearly sixty years, Ed Ruscha has been using words as objects. He has designed his own fonts. His choice of medium is often unexpected; he has used fruit juice, gunpowder, tobacco and even chocolate to create works that are engaging, often droll and reflect the California culture that he embraced when he moved to LA to study art in 1956.
Ruscha began his career in LA working in an advertising agency. He was born Nebraska, raised in Oklahoma. In LA he discovered a new world that he found very appealing. "They had a hot-rod culture here, they had palm trees, they had blonde beach bunnies in the sand.” he said, “There was progressive jazz happening at the same time. All of that added up to a possibly attractive future.”
The architecture, the streets, the Hollywood sign (which he could see from his studio window) and bold-lettered billboards, those familiar cultural motifs that he engaged with on a daily basis, became part of his works. He not only painted, but also photographed, his surroundings.
Woman of Fire and Begin Anywhere, recent acquisitions at VFA, are both lithographs done in 2024. Each piece is a continuation of the working style that has made him one of the most appealing, and one of the wealthiest, living artists in the world.
In 2020, Jeff Bezos reportedly bought Ruscha’s Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964) for $52.5 million at Christie’s, which broke the record price for a work by the artist at auction at that time.
Last year, Standard Station,Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, 1964, one of Ruscha’s iconic gas station paintings, sold for $68,260,000 at Christie’s.
Ruscha’s works can be found in the permanent collections of major museums around the world. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given the National Arts Award for Artistic Excellence, named in Time’s 2013 annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world and given the J. Paul Getty Medal in 2019.
Ed Ruscha still lives and works in Culver City, California.
References:
Lynn Farah. 7 of the richest artists alive – net worths, ranked: from Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde animals to Jeff Koons’ most expensive, US $9 million work, and Anish Kapoor – but who’s a billionaire?. Style Magazine. March 28, 2024.
