When asked about the emphasis of text in his practice, artist Ed Ruscha once remarked, “I just happened to paint words like someone else paints flowers.” Early in his career, Ruscha abandoned traditional forms of painting, instead taking an interest in advertising tropes. Drawn to the language he found in magazines, comics, newspapers, and billboards in the 1950s and 1960s, Ruscha composed paintings big and small based on commercial logos, phrases, and onomatopoeias. In Glenstone’s collection is Adios, 1967, featuring the titular word painted to appear like maple syrup with beans stuck to the letters. With humor and wit, language has remained a consistent subject for Ruscha for more than six decades, exploring words as material, form, and symbol.

–From the Glenstone Field Guide