Ed Ruscha, "A MAN OF FEW WORDS" by Emma Forrest

A MAN OF FEW WORDS

Ed Ruscha, one of the creators of pop art, talks
to Emma Forrest about earthquakes, inspirations -
and the artists he rates today

Wednesday February 6, 2008

At 70 years of age, clean-shaven, with thick
white hair and a fine physique, the artist Ed
Ruscha is disarmingly handsome. He looks
something like his close friend Dennis Hopper,
but even more like a tidied-up Harry Dean
Stanton. He has on a grey sweatshirt, blue jeans,
normal-looking sneakers and spectacles that might
be expensive. His voice sounds luxurious, too.
Not posh, but lush and comforting, a slight Jack
Nicholson drawl. As I enter his studio, Woody,
his dog and mascot, comes running at me with a
combination of kisses and growls. "Woody senses
you're a writer," Ruscha says, deadpan.

Interviews are hard with Ed Ruscha, one of the
creators of pop art, his work appearing alongside
that of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the
groundbreaking 1962 LA show New Painting of
Common Objects. Not because he's difficult - but
because he's so agreeable. (Incidentally, a note
on the correct pronunciation of that name: it's
"roo-SHAY".)

Posit a take on his work - which straddles
painting, drawing and photography, and challenges
our ideas about what life is like in the modern,
media-saturated city - and he'll smile and
answer: "I think you're right." Or he'll blink
and say: "That makes a lot of sense ... Would you
like some more water?" You don't really get the
feeling he's being evasive. He's just midwestern,
from Nebraska, the absolute centre of the
country. Perhaps that's why he seems somehow
centred. Far from having an artist's temperament,
he is like a farmer who just happened to wander
into that cavernous studio of his in Venice,
California, and start, well, working. Asked how
it felt to represent America at the 2005 Venice
Biennale, after decades of slow-simmering
acclaim, he concedes: "That was very ... good. It
was quite a surprise, and a good one." Still, he
wanted to get back to LA. "The more I travel," he
says, "the more I want to be home."

Home has been California since he left Nebraska
to study at Cal-Arts, thinking he would like to
be a sign painter, but soon gravitating to visual
art. Back then, California was a wasteland for an
artist. Ruscha never cared. "I equate the eastern
side of the country with the industrial side of
America," he says, "and the west with open
spaces." California has been the undercurrent of
so much of his work, from his 1966 book of
photographs, Every Building On the Sunset Strip
(true to its title), to that 1962 group show,
which inaugurated the concept of pop art, then
seen as so shocking.

"I hate to see change here," he says. "I'm very
stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of
California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm
looking at is now full of houses. There used to
be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up
by three-storey boxes - it's all getting
infilled."

According to the dictionary, "infilled" isn't a
word, but then this is the man who sealed his
reputation with "word paintings", visual
interpretations of words and phrases: Lisp
(powdered graphite and pencil on paper, 1966);
Ding (gunpowder and pastel on paper, 1971);
Amusing Alloys (acrylic on paper, 1991). LA may
be "infilled", but isn't it also pretty wild,
with roaming coyotes and raccoons? "Possums are
all over Venice," he nods. "They're nasty. Don't
you challenge one." I won't. "Well ... good."

It becomes hard not to make word paintings in
your head when talking to Ruscha. I look over at
Woody, panting by the desk: Well ... Good (dog
saliva, 2008). But it's not just possums here.
There are earthquakes, landslides. All your art
could just crumble overnight. "That thought is
always there. It's sort of exciting."

Born in Omaha in 1937, Ruscha says his first
visual memory is of seeing an owl in a tree when
he was two. "That's my connection to that place
in my life," he says. "The owl was hooting. I
think that I saw that owl. But you know how
stories ... " Change over time? I read out a
press release for his current show at the
Gagosian Gallery in London. Describing the
hanging of old paintings side by side with new
renderings of the same image, it talks about "the
lie at the core of the work". He sits up
straight. "The lie at the core?" He turns the
phrase over on his tongue. "The lie at the core.
Huh. That's a different way to look at it. That's
not something I'm intending people to see."

What are you intending people to see? He shrugs.
"I have no social agenda with my work. I'm
deadpan about it." The traditional midwestern
qualities again. "Uh-huh. Could be." It seems
that what has always been labelled "California
art" is actually California seen through the lens
of midwestern values. "I was raised with the
Bible belt mentality, and by coming to
California, I came out of this dark place and
unlearned a lot of things I'd been taught."

What must his family have thought when he decided
to become an artist? "My father didn't like it so
much, because it was not practical. He was
sceptical until he read an article about Walt
Disney that said he was a benefactor of my
school. Then my father said, 'Keep going there!'"
Ruscha's dad died before seeing his son's
success. His mother continued to suggest he would
make a good weatherman. "I said, 'It sounds
interesting, but I'll get to that tomorrow.'"

Inspired by Jasper Johns' interpretation of
numbers, letters, targets and other "things we
have looked at but not examined", Ruscha stuck
with art school, never dreaming he would ever
sell a painting. The first 10 shows he had, he
didn't. "The real drive was to impress my friends
and colleagues, people I respected. What's
greater than that? I basically got down on my
hands and knees and wanted their approval."

Thinking back to the 1962 show, he says: "There
was a common thread, not necessarily visual. We
felt very sympathetic towards one another, but
the work was nothing alike." And looking back on
his work, he is pleased by his restraint. "I
didn't have to fill up a picture frame." You're
restrained as a person, too? "Maybe." That seems
unusual for a famous artist. "Could be."

I am stunned when he tells me that the painting
that has most inspired him is Millais' Ophelia,
showing her drowning in a stream, having been
driven mad. "It's a prominent work in my life as
an artist. I saw it when I was 21, 22, and I've
made many pilgrimages to it." But you're so, not,
mad. "I saw other things beyond the romance of
the tragedy. There's this figure and you're
looking down on it and there's a woodsy beauty to
it, the greens and water that really had a
message to me. I was thinking about it when I
painted The Los Angeles County Museum On Fire."

He admires Tracey Emin and Bill Woodrow; are
there artists working in other mediums with whom
he feels on the same wavelength? "The Coen
brothers are really great. No Country for Old Men
was particularly good. All of their movies are.
David Lynch, I have to say, has really got some
good things going. Mulholland Drive - that was
good! And Inland Empire ... " His voice is
excited. "I didn't like that one. Long and drawn
out."

Because life in LA necessitates being in cars,
the radio here is nothing if not lively. Many
hours of drive-time, filled with words - ideal
for a word painter. "Yeah, yeah!" he says.
"There's two stations you can get on to at the
same time. Most radios will pick up the
neighbouring station for some reason. I like
that! I like hearing weird music over the top of
a stock report. The clashing of two unlike
things: that is the key to all our problems.
Introducing another unplanned thing into a fact
of life, an antagonistic thing that somehow makes
something new."

Ruscha has never gone in search of a word or
phrase for a painting. "They happen, fairly
fluidly. I've never said, 'I haven't had an idea
in three days - I have to go look at a
dictionary.'" Ever been haunted by a word? "I've
had a lot bounce around that never get
addressed." But not in a bothersome way? He
points to the back of the studio, where a new
painting bears the legend: "HOT RIP STOP". "They
come out of mystery, the mystery of the brain."
He smiles. "To try to explain is a fruitless
effort."

In 1969, when he didn't want to paint any more
because he felt it was just putting a skin on a
surface, he began to take a canvas and stain it -
tobacco juice, blood - so the substance went down
into the fabric. "Then I went back to painting,"
he says. It all sounds so simple and easy, and
utterly without ego. "Part of ego," he says,
petting Woody's ears, "is displaying the ego.
I've got ego and I think I'm really good. But
maybe I fall down in trying to sell it to people."

When he walks me out, he signs two copies of
Busted Glass, the catalogue from his last show of
drawings at the Gagosian. In my friend's copy, he
writes: "Happy trails." The urge to analyse the
real meaning of those two words is overwhelming,
such was his quiet and reserve. It makes what he
wrote in my copy seem sort of genius: "Rage on!
Ed Ruscha".

Pics
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2008/feb/06/art.photography?picture=
332398609>

<http://www.nga.gov/feature/ruscha/ruscha01.htm>

<http://www.edruscha.com/site/workList.cfm>

. Ed Ruscha: Paintings is at the Gagosian,
Britannia St, London, until March 15. Details:
020-7841 9960

Guardian Unlimited C Guardian News and Media Limited 2008