Edward Ruscha

''Some [words] are found, ready made, some are dreams, some come from newspapers. They are finished by blind faith. No matter if I've seen it on television or read it in the newspaper, my mind seems to wrap itself around that thing until it's done.'' (Ed Ruscha in an interview with Jana Sterbak 'Premeditated: An Interview with Ed Ruscha' in Real Life Magazine, Summer 1985)

The monumental Here and Now arises from Ed Ruscha's longstanding fascination with words.  This interest is multilayered: the way they look, how they sound, their vernacular usage and the inherent ambiguity of meaning. From early in his career, Ruscha incorporated text into his compositions, initially with the support of collage, or gestural painting, but he quickly moved to portraying words in isolation and, by 1966-67, he embraced language as the sole subject of his work. Executed in 1997, Here and Now looks back to Ruscha's seminal works of the 1960s in the richness of the words on the canvas. Having evolved through a range of different fonts, formats and backgrounds over three decades, the present work embodies a composite of monosyllabic words drenched in colloquial and philosophical meaning. By isolating the words Ruscha forces a critical reevaluation of their ontological significance and by destabilising their meaning he makes the viewer question something that they had previously taken as a certainty.

Ruscha's love of words, and ambivalence towards images, creates a dramatic tension in his canvases as he searches to find sufficient ways to express himself: ''When I first became attracted to the idea of being an artist, painting was the last method, it was an almost obsolete, archaic form of communication.  I felt newspapers, magazines, books, words, to be more meaningful than what some damn oil painter was doing.''  (the artist cited in Neal Benezra, Ed Ruscha: Painting and Artistic License, Washington, D.C. 2000, p. 145). In Here and Now, Ruscha finds a powerful way to combine the directness of the printed media with the stylistic beauty of fine art.

Ruscha originally trained as a signwriter and this formative experience informs the network of words, phrases, symbols and expressive techniques that constitute his oeuvre, which simultaneously explores the inherent beauty of words while embracing the complexities of language. Used collectively by everyone, the message that words communicate is measured by each of us differently. On a conceptual level, Ruscha delights in this inherent ambiguity of the words 'Here and Now' which, when deconstructed, proffer a myriad of potential unstable meanings. Here and Now can be interepreted as an imperative, challenging the viewer to be utterely present and engage absolutely with the painting. The imposing words are stencilled in bold, capitalised red letters, their scale and immediacy commanding the viewer to be present at this specific point, at this specific time. It can also be a suggestion towards introspection: in colloquial speech the phrase refers to the concept of one's personal actions and awareness at any given time. Furthermore, in terms of spacetime, these words mean the same thing - here is now.

Surrounding the text, the four cardinal directions, north, south, east and west are represented at the extreme edges.  These pointers act as general terms for the spatial coordinates that we use to define our geographical position in the world.  Denoting direction, they also appear as a basis for a mental map. Combined with Here and Now, they question the certainty of where 'here and now' actually is, querying the spatial accuracy of the statement in a wry and deadpan juxtaposition of words.

Beautifully rendered with meticulous precision, Here and Now stands as one of Ruscha's most striking mature works. Visually arresting and philosophically loaded, it combines the subtle wit and calculated understatement that imbues Ruscha's best work.