Ed Ruscha’s career-long focus on semiotics and the power of connecting words and images to form new meaning has earned him a singular position in the pantheon of twentieth-century art. Ruscha’s President, executed from 1968-1972, is a special landmark of this journey. The background was painted in August of 1968 while the word ‘President’ was completed in August 1972; in a letter to Leo Castelli dated September 8, 1972, Ruscha wrote that he was giving the painting to a fundraiser at Pace Gallery for the 1972 McGovern campaign. The work situates within a series of around 10 works executed from 1971 to 1973 featuring single words set in small type Stymie Ex Bold, with each individual letter set further apart than in standard typography. The small font type and drastically expanded character spacing gives an illusion of levity or suspension, while also awarding each letter a charged autonomy that resists legibility, disrupting the act of reading and comprehension and presenting each character as abstract pictures as much as letters. The resulting proclamation “P R E S I D E N T” is both textual and imagistic, both demure and brazen, emanating from its neutral surrounding as a self-affirming beacon of America. Taking a highly charged word and further complicating it through his technical artistry and visual contextualization, Ruscha’s President is a paradigm of the artist’s signature marriage of text and image to convey words as physical, optically and intellectually stimulating pictorial objects.

Initially inspired by the synthesis of Pop and Conceptualism pioneered by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Ruscha began creating text paintings in the late 1950s. These early compositions brought together the regimented and rule-laden world of printed matter with the expressive freedom of painting. As the artist was beginning to establish his signature focus, scale and proportion became incredibly important as a basis for communication. With his early focus on single words, Ruscha’s ability to shift the formal qualities of his subject matter helped the artist create nuanced, deeply profound pockets of meaning out of monosyllabic utterances. Words in Ruscha’s paintings would become distorted as well as grow and shrink in endless permutations as the artist worked through the building blocks of communication. Critic Peter Schjeldahl has said, in relation to Ruscha’s works from this period: “Coming up on any Ruscha word picture if like hitting a rock in the road, a distinct bump... Now that I am looking, a subtle confusion sets in. A Ruscha word picture delicately frustrates the drive of reading, which is the will to comprehend a complete meaning, by presenting the word in a visual manner clamorous with seemingly complementary but actually disruptive suggestions of its own...The effect is uncanny and provocative. My surrender to the experience brings a feather-light intimation of beauty: uncanniness as pleasure, provocativeness as satisfaction” (Peter Schjeldahl in Exh. Cat., New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Edward Ruscha Stains 1971 to 1975, 1992, n.p.).

President is a powerful example of Ruscha’s appropriation of existing vernacular imagery, the given word being so charged and fraught in contemporary lexicons. Connoting power and regality, politics and contention, and attitudes ranging from respect and reverence to disdain and farce, the word ‘President’ bears multifarious potential meanings that contribute to the impact, complexity and intrigue of the artwork, getting to the crux of Ruscha’s oeuvre. The prevalence and laden nature of the word resonates with Ruscha’s understanding of it; as he stated: “Words have temperatures to me. When they reach a certain point and become hot words, then 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. Usually I catch them before they get too hot” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., London, Hayward Gallery (and travelling), Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, 2009, pp. 46-47).

By objectifying the written word into his distinguished lexicographic painting style, Ruscha became the trailblazing ‘Pop Artist of the West coast’ and all round purveyor of American cool. His canonical influence continues to inspire artists today and his cultural impact is reflected in the numerous retrospectives and major museum shows of his work which include institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Walker Art Center, the Hayward Gallery, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Denver Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, among others.

埃德・魯沙的畢生創作，都專注於將文字與影像聯繫組成新意義的力量，以及符號學的探索，並憑此在人才輩出的二十世紀藝術界穩佔一席位。魯沙作品《總統》創作於1968-1972年期間，是其創作生涯的一幅代表作。他在1968年8月繪畫背景部份，畫中「President」（總統）一字則完成於1972年8月。1972年9月8日，他寫信給藝術商里奧·卡斯特里，表示自己預備將此作送給佩斯畫廊舉行的喬治·麥戈文總統競選籌款活動。本作所屬系列共有約十幅畫，完成於1971至1973年之間，每幅作品均以一個單詞為主題，而且全部採用「Stymie Ex 」粗體字款，每個字母之間的距離都比標準字體較遠。較小的字體和大幅度擴展的字母距離，予人一種輕浮的錯覺，同時為每個字母注入一種語帶相關、抗拒可讀性的自主感，刻意擾亂讀寫行為，將每個字母同時作為抽象圖案展示，所成的宣示：「P R E S I D E N T」既是文字也是圖像，既端莊同時卻又厚顏，從中性的環境當中浮現與觀者眼前，有如一個自我肯定的、象徵美國的燈塔。本作將一個意味深長的字，利用創作者技術性的藝術造詣及視覺情境化進一步將其身份變得更加複雜，是藝術家將文字及影像融合為一經典創作的傑出範例，將話語化作一種能在物理、視覺和智性上帶來刺激的圖像物件。

魯沙最初受到賈斯培·瓊斯和羅伯特·勞森伯格倡導的流行與概念主義的綜合啟發，在1950年代後期開始創作文字畫。這些早期作品將有條理而規則繁多的印刷品世界與繪畫藝術的表現自由融為一體。隨著藝術家開始確立代表性的創作重點開始，規模和比例作為溝通的基礎變得異常重要。魯沙早期專注於單字，因此能夠改變其創作主題的形態，從而得以自單音節話語當中創造出細微而深刻的多重意義。藝術家以溝通的構成板塊來進行創作，這些文字畫中的字詞變得扭曲、放大縮小，變化無窮無盡。評論家彼得·施耶爾達爾對於此時期的魯沙作品有如此評論：「在魯沙的文字畫上出現，就像在路上走著踢到石頭一樣，與別不同的碰撞 ……我正看著，一種微妙的困惑感越來越重。魯沙的文字畫通過視覺化的方式呈現該詞，並混雜著看似相輔相成但實際上具有擾亂性的建議，微妙地挫敗著觀者閱讀的動力，亦即理解字詞背後完整含義的意願，其效果是奧妙而具有挑釁性的。我全心被這種體驗降伏，換來的是一種輕靈如無物的美感：神秘感令人感到愉悅，挑釁性令人滿足。」（彼得·施耶爾達爾，《Edward Ruscha Stains 1971 to 1975》展覽圖錄，羅伯特·米勒畫廊，紐約，1992年，無頁數）

《總統》是魯沙挪用現有方言意象的重要例子，既定的字詞在當代詞彙當中背後含義是如此豐富而令人困擾。「總統」包含了力量與榮華、政治與爭議、從尊重與尊敬到蔑視與胡鬧的各種態度，同時具有多種潛在含義，全都可以影響藝術品的感染力、複雜性和引人入勝的能力，直達魯沙作品的關鍵所在。這個詞的普及性和涵義豐富的本質與魯沙對它的理解互相呼應；正如他所說：「對我來說，話語是有溫度的。當它們高達某個溫度而變成熱詞的時候，就會變得很吸引我……有時候我夢到如果一個字詞變得太熱又太吸引的話，就會沸騰分解，而我將無法閱讀或思考它。通常我會在它們變得太熱之前抓住它們。」（引述自藝術家，《 埃德・魯沙：繪畫五十年》展覽圖錄，海沃德畫廊（巡迴展），倫敦，2009年，頁46-47）

「西岸波普藝術家」魯沙獨闢蹊徑的創作風格將書面文字物體化成為文字畫，展現出非常「酷」的美式風情。他至今仍然啟發著許多藝術家，而他的文化影響力可引無數回顧展及各大博物館館藏為證，包括三藩市現代藝術博物館、惠特尼美國藝術博物館、聖安東尼奧藝術博物館、洛杉磯郡藝術博物館、龐畢度藝術中心、赫希洪博物館及雕塑花園、保羅·蓋蒂博物館、悉尼當代藝術博物館、蘇格蘭國家現代美術館、洛杉磯當代藝術博物館、華盛頓特區國家美術館、沃克藝術中心、海沃德畫廊、沃思堡現代美術館、漢默美術館、丹佛藝術博物館及北邁阿密當代藝術博物館等。