"The horizon paintings partially come out of long drives across the desert. Those are the kinds of drives I really get into. The vastness just asks to be filled with something, and those paintings are a lot about putting a voice into that vastness. When you are driving, you just start thinking about getting to the other side of the horizon—what city do I want to get to; where am I going?"
T heatrical and breathtaking in its expertly executed sfumato, Ed Ruscha’s It’s OK ー Everything’s OK reverberates with a dynamic energy utterly unique to the artist’s peerless style in which image, symbol and text coexist in sometimes tensile relationships. Executed in 1979, the present work is part of a series of sunset paintings that Ruscha developed during the 1970s and 1980s. A highly saturated, candy-colored sky painted in vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows, the present work recalls the landscape of California deserts. Throughout his singular career, Ruscha has explored semiotics and employed various artistic techniques to address how words and symbols carry meaning when juxtaposed with image. Ruscha has stenciled the words “ It’s OK ー Everything’s OK” in crisp white paint on the lower right and left hand corners of the canvas, prompting the reader to draw nearer in order to make out the last words. A poetic landscape reinforced by the phrase included by Ruscha, It’s OK ー Everything’s OK prompts reflection.
Right: Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Scarlet Sunset, c.1830–40, the Tate, London
The familiar and reassuring phrase of the present work emerges from its tranquil surrounding as a self-affirming beacon of colloquial America. The calming nature of the phrase perfectly parallels the relaxing atmosphere of the surrounding painting. Reminiscent of a nineteenth century landscape painting by Turner or John Constable, the present work’s treatment of paint is blended and fused so that the colors seep into each other, ultimately forming a sublime representation of dusk. The result is a serene and placid view of the horizon that generously provides the viewer with a splendid scene of one of nature's greatest offerings, the sunset.
The seductive and theatrical nature of the painting is a product of Ruscha’s first road trip to California from Oklahoma on his way to art school. Together with Mason Williams, Ruscha flew across Route 66 toward Los Angeles where he settled and became a commercial artist. Widescreen billboards of decontextualized words and a constant sequencing of images projected onto miles of the endless expanse of the mythic West personified a unique, contemporary cinematic experience, one that would later inform the present work, not only in the words used on the canvas, but also in the granular treatment of paint. An exquisite painting from an important and iconic series by Ruscha, It’s OK ー Everything’s OK enthralls viewers, enchanting them in in its compositional complexity and its instantaneous visual appeal.
