Ed Ruscha: Final Say
Published by Crown Point Press, this two-color hard-ground etching by Ed Ruscha is one of a series produced in 2023 and depicts the two words that comprise its title. This short phrase is rendered in a style similar to that of the artist’s “swiped” word paintings, which likewise suggest that their verbal subjects are in rapid motion. As a group, the prints also begin to hint at a loose narrative involving movement or travel; in Final Say, the titular phrase is rendered on a steep downhill gradient in lines of blue and red.
Ruscha has been building a lexicon of signs, symbols, images, and words drawn from vernacular American culture since his start as an artist in the 1960s. Over the course of a more than sixty-year career, and across a broad range of mediums, his visual utterances, sounds, and concepts have become embedded in the national ethos. Ruscha applies a wry verbal and visual wit to his chosen subjects, exploring the frequent disconnect between ideas and their expression to celebrate what he calls “everyday noise.”
Description
Published by Crown Point Press, this two-color hard-ground etching by Ed Ruscha is one of a series produced in 2023 and depicts the two words that comprise its title. This short phrase is rendered in a style similar to that of the artist’s “swiped” word paintings, which likewise suggest that their verbal subjects are in rapid motion. As a group, the prints also begin to hint at a loose narrative involving movement or travel; in Final Say, the titular phrase is rendered on a steep downhill gradient in lines of blue and red.
Ruscha has been building a lexicon of signs, symbols, images, and words drawn from vernacular American culture since his start as an artist in the 1960s. Over the course of a more than sixty-year career, and across a broad range of mediums, his visual utterances, sounds, and concepts have become embedded in the national ethos. Ruscha applies a wry verbal and visual wit to his chosen subjects, exploring the frequent disconnect between ideas and their expression to celebrate what he calls “everyday noise.”
