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Edward Joseph Ruscha IV, born December 16, 1937.
"When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were gutteral utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase; I just happened to paint words like someone else paints flowers. It wasn't until later that I was interested in combinations of words and making thoughts, sentences, and things like that."

Ed Ruscha was born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska. The painter now lives in Los Angeles where he has gained worldwide fame for his very unique and individualistic works.
His Czech background may help to explain many of his works, where words on canvas speak more loudly than the actual image or object. Ruscha is happy letting his words convey an open-ended meaning that is subject to any number of interpretations, depending upon the viewer's "baggage."

California has had an enormous effect on Ruscha's work. Many of his paintings can be mistaken for stills from a Hollywood movie. The images are so plain, yet carry a message that is at the same time both obvious and ambiguous. The viewer does not know what has occurred before or after the painting's image coming into existence, but the viewer has an idea that something has happened; it is similar to trying to solve a mystery without knowing the when, where, why, or how, but only the what.

Some of Ruscha's works, such as Sheldon's Barns and Farms, are in another category of work--the meaning depends on the viewer's knowledge, background, history, individual perspective, and bias. There is no overt meaning to the works, and Ruscha wants the viewer to do the interpreting. "You can be confused by Ruscha's work, and occasionally misled by it, but you cannot get lost in it."1 This quote perfectly sums up Ruscha's art. The surface work of his paintings is neither deep nor complicated, somewhat similar to Andy Warhol's cans of Campbell's Soup. Ruscha's work, though, does not condescend as does Warhol's but instead idealizes the icons. Ruscha also aspires to communicate something specific yet universal, such as one work entitled, Industrial Chemical. Most viewers know what each of those two words means, and each viewer has a perception of he or she thinks about those two words (pollution, corruption of the land, technology, progress, etc.). These two words, painted on a canvas alone, would probably elicit many different reactions. This work, though, has the two words in abbreviated form with a red, silhouetted background. What does this mean? Again, it is up to the viewer's own "baggage" to determine.

Ruscha's work forces the viewer to become an active rather than passive participant in the viewing process. The viewer has to read the words on the painting, and in doing so begins to interact with the painting. Ruscha wants his paintings to work on three different levels of meaning: words, picture, and the combination of the two. Depending upon what the viewer brings to her or his own viewing of the work, the result will be something relatively unique to that individual.

For 40 years, Edward Ruscha has been an influential voice in postwar American painting as well as one of contemporary art's most significant graphic artists. ...

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