Property from a Private Collection
ED RUSCHA
b. 1937
Wall Rockets
acrylic on canvas
64 by 71 ½ in.
162.6 by 181.6 cm.
Executed in 2000.
In Residence
“I like the tension of having a combination of words or a word in front of something that is also lively in itself like a mountain top, and a lot of these mountain tops suggest glory or beauty, things like that. They almost have their own orchestration, you can almost hear trumpets playing, and I like that reference. It's sort of a non-verbal way of referencing something that is really not making any noise at all. But then put in combination with words—that tension is where I live.”
Ed Ruscha quoted in: “Ed Ruscha - The Tension of Words and Images | Artist Interview | TateShots,” Tate, 23 May 2019, 3:10–4:05 (video))
Executed in 2000, Ed Ruscha’s Wall Rockets belongs to a group of paintings created at the advent of the 21st century in which words and phrases are set against expansive landscapes. Across a mountain range rendered with remarkable clarity, Ruscha places the words “WALL ROCKETS” in crisp white lettering, bringing together two elements that have defined his practice for more than six decades: language and image. Rather than functioning as a caption or directive, the otherwise ephemeral phrase is empowered by its backdrop to occupy the composition as a physical form in its own right, inviting viewers to consider the interstices between language, perception, and the constructed image as they constantly recur within Ruscha’s practice.
Ruscha has explored the visual character of language since the beginning of his career. After moving from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, the artist became absorbed by the city’s billboards, storefronts, studios, signage and film culture, a language that was recognizably American and as such, transcended a purely communicative role within visual culture. Taking this as his point of departure, Ruscha developed an approach based around words taken in isolation from their surroundings and found they carried the same impact and presence as an image. In Ruscha’s paintings, language has scale, weight, and a distinctive sense of autonomy. A word may sit on the surface of the canvas, cut across a horizon or hold its own against a landscape, directing the eye while remaining open to association.
The mountain intensifies this dialogue. Ruscha began using mountain imagery in his paintings in the 1990s, setting sharply defined peaks against words, phrases and emblems. Ruscha’s use of the mountain invokes a myriad of art historical associations which makes his distinctly contemporary recontextualizing of the motif all the more incisive. Executed in his characteristically precise hand, the mountain in Wall Rockets boasts the grandeur of a panoramic American landscape as it does the austere reverence of the Romantic sublime. The landscape recalls the clarity of expeditionary photography, postcards and cinematic backdrops, and yet it gives no indication of a particular place. The ambiguity of the landscape echoes the anonymity of the words atop it. Neither element illustrates the other. Instead, the mountain gives the phrase scale and atmosphere, while the phrase interrupts the expectation that a landscape should be approached as an uninterrupted view.
In Wall Rockets, this investigation takes one of its most distilled forms. Like many of Ruscha’s word paintings, the phrase offers no fixed narrative, allowing the viewer to move between different associations and interpretations. “Wall” suggests permanence, architecture, and boundaries; “rockets” implies propulsion, escape, and velocity. Together they create a collision of opposing ideas: stasis and movement, obstruction and flight. At the same time, and as is characteristic of the satiric humor which often underpins Rushca’s clever choice of words, the phrase is likewise a self-referential nod to the experience of viewing the painting. “Wall Rockets” becomes something of a directive, a call to move beyond the two-dimensional realm of the picture plane that echoes the visual effect which the text has on the eye.
This balance between word and image is central to the physical experience of Wall Rockets. The cool blue field establishes depth, while the white letters remain emphatically on the surface. The eye oscillates between reading the phrase and looking through it toward the mountain. What first appears immediately legible becomes a sustained act of observation. The painting does not ask the viewer to solve the words, but to notice how language can alter an image and how an image can redirect the meanings of language.
In its recent 2023-24 retrospective, ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the Museum of Modern Art placed renewed attention on the consistency of Ruscha’s approach across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking and books, and on the ways in which his images of language continue to shape contemporary visual culture. Installed at Marcel in The Breuer, Wall Rockets enters a setting defined by changing viewpoints, conversation and repeated encounters. Ruscha’s work has always drawn energy from the language and architecture of everyday public life, from signs read in passing to words retained in memory. Within the restaurant, the painting can be seen at different distances and at different moments, allowing its phrase to register first as an image and then as language. Its opposing terms remain held in productive balance: the wall and the rocket, the fixed surface and the impulse toward motion.
