Edward Ruscha

The publication of Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonn' of the Works on Paper, Volume 1, a hefty tome that covers the years 1956 through 1976, affords an opportunity to view the Los Angeles artist's developing fascination with what language might look like. The book tracks his movement from an initial interest in signage (the early-'60s drafts for his iconic paintings of the 20th Century Fox logo, the Standard Oil gas-station sign, and Annie in the comic strip's type) to later images that are highly idiosyncratic, downright poetic concoctions ( Thick Blocks of Musical Fudge is the phrase in one 1976 pastel). With two, three, and sometimes four such reproductions many with just a single word) on each page, this massive volume is crowded with text in a way most art books are not; in fact, a quick thumb through suggests something more like a child's dictionary. A welter of emphatically rendered words--gauze, room, range, rut, walk, city, salt, soda, self, squirt, poach, mercy, fever, fix, flood, sin, sure, cement, age, blank, bull, jelly, pudding, ding, dew, pool, radio, vapor, dusty, trust--tumbles out from the page, its audible music registering as readily as its visual allure. A catalogue raisonn' is generally designed to value scholarship and completist accuracy more than aesthetic impact, and these reproductions-true to form-are merely adequate. But the book, in its totality from page to page, can actually be read as much more-as a long synesthetic poem, one that imagines a shape, color, and sound for words and speaks to our profoundest understanding of human expression.--Albert Mobilio Bookforum