Truth

Painted in 1973, Ed Ruscha’s Truth is one of the artist’s signature paintings in which he turns a seemingly simple singular word into a powerful and enigmatic motif. No other artist has lent such illustrative intrigue to minimal text and phrases, a feat which has cemented his place as a visionary within the history of American art. Truth is a particularly compelling canvas that marries Ruscha’s forthright delivery with painterly finesse. In the artist’s hands, the moral imperative is transformed into an image, an object, and a physical presence while still retaining all the cultural connotations connected to its broad, philosophical meaning. This work is the definitive rendering of the painter’s mindset when he noted, “Words have temperatures to me. When they have reached a certain point and become hot words they appeal to me... sometimes I have a dream that if a word gets too hot and too appealing, it will boil apart, and I won't be able to read or think of it” (E. Ruscha, “Repainting, redrawing and rephotographing Los Angeles”, Art Newspaper, December 19, 2012). The combination of textual immediacy, the use of a volcanic color palette, and the sheer size of the canvas lend Truth a roiling, explosive presence that seems to muscle its way off the wall and into the world.

Set within a dichromatic earthy space, the word ‘TRUTH’ in all capitals cuts into our field of view. Rendered in a fiery gradient that resembles burning embers or a California sunrise, the letters stretch horizontally across the five-foot canvas as their serifs threaten to expand beyond the confines of the picture plane. Ruscha’s choice to use deep red at the upper extremities of the lettering gradually shifts into orange and lemon yellow makes the text heavier at the top and establishes an imposing air for the entire work. The backdrop is painted with wide, visible strokes of burnt ochre that segue into a warm earthy expanse of organic hues at the top. Where these two fields meet, a hazy line of diaphanous color acts almost as an illusionistic groundline for the titular word. This smoky air is at odds with the sharpness of Ruscha’s text, a juxtaposition possible through his use of reverse stenciling techniques which allow each letter to act as a window into another layer or neatly separate from the background as a discrete object depending on how the viewer experiences the work. “Usually in my paintings, I'm creating some sort of disorder between the different elements”, Ruscha has explained “and avoiding the recognizable aspect of living things by painting words. I like the feeling of an enormous pressure in a painting” (E. Ruscha, quoted in R. Marshall, Ed Ruscha, New York 2003, p. 241). By creating this optical complexity within a seemingly simple composition, the artist provokes a stronger response and lends an intense gravity to what amounts to a single word hovering in space.

Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 after studying in Oklahoma. It was there that he began to experiment with the interplay of text and image for which he would become known. Marrying photographs of streets, signs, and gas stations with words and phrases borrowed from commercial culture, his nuanced assemblages aligned him with the budding Pop Art movement. However, instead of turning his eye toward consumerism or mass media, Ruscha’s deadpan compositions had their own internal logic which prefigured the idea-based practices of many future Conceptual artists. Asked about the words that often littered his surfaces, the artist remarked, “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” (E. Ruscha, quoted in J. Sterbak “Premeditated: An Interview with Ed Ruscha”, Real Life Magazine, Summer 1985). Pulling inspiration from the world around him, Ruscha struck a chord with viewers, critics, and collectors alike. It was his virtuosic experimentation with text and image combinations that caught the attention of the illustrious Walter Hopps. Working at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum), the curator included Ruscha in the legendary 1962 exhibition “New Painting of Common Objects” alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and other Pop luminaries. Hopps, founder of the influential Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, helped to push Ruscha’s career into high gear.

Truth is a member of a discrete series that the artist started in 1972 as a visualization of the moral tenets of Ruscha’s Catholic upbringing. Included in the grouping are paintings such as Gospel (1972, Art Gallery of New South Wales), Mercy (1972), Purity (1972), Faith (1972), and one of several versions of Hope including a 1998 work on paper in the collection of Tate Modern, London). Each word is rendered in italic Bodoni Ultra Bold, a favorite font of Ruscha that he used in other canvases to give material substance to a word, something which is on full display in the present example.

Truth’s genesis can be found in the legendary figure of Irving Blum, the director of the L.A. based Ferus Gallery. Ruscha was introduced by Blum to Merle and Pearl Glick, the first owners of the painting; Merle was a dentist and Pearl was Blum’s cousin, and both had an insatiable appetite for collecting art. Their tastes veered strongly toward the burgeoning Pop Art scene thanks to Hopps and Blum, and it was because of this that they struck up a lasting relationship with Ruscha and the other artists who populated the Ferus stable. In 1970, Ruscha created a painting titled Tooth for Merle, a nod towards the collector’s profession. Three years later, the artist made a wry allusion to this previous painting and its rhyming title when he painted the present work for the couple’s collection.

Truth is remarkable for both its smoldering intensity as well as Ruscha’s ability to coax the feeling of dimensional space out of a single word on an abstract colorfield. As Kerry Brougher has explained, "Ruscha's words hover between the flat, transversal surfaces of the graphic artist and the longitudinal, deep-space world of landscape painting" (K. Brougher, Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2000, p. 161). Landscape painting, though perhaps not immediately apparent, has been a source of much inspiration for Ruscha even as works like the present example seem to depict a non-place or some hazy abstraction. The present example is reminiscent of a desert at dusk or an aerial view of dusty fields against a darkening sky. The letters themselves could be hovering in the immediate foreground or resting upon the floor; Ruscha’s close crop and tight composition create a visual ambiguity that confuses our understanding of the scene as it moves from the picture plane to the illusionistic depth of an imagined beyond.