Ed Ruscha: "A word has no size."

The Louisiana Museum in Denmark publishes artist videos every week on YouTube, such an incredible free archive! If you know me, you know how I feel about Ed Ruscha, whose work I first came across at 15 and it quickly and quietly rocked my world. I saw this video of him around that time and really appreciated the way he spoke, with a natural assuredness and offhand poetry that feels very true to his work.

Ed Ruscha has a steady, intuitive logic about images, words, and why certain things stick. He follows something before it fully makes sense and trusts it will hold. What we’re drawn to isn’t always rational and making art certainly isn’t either - what makes a man want to paint a giant word?

It’s funny to me/I’ve been loving that he's gained such mass popularity in the last few years because at its core his work is just so weird! Flying in a helicopter to photograph parking lots, making a 15 foot painting of a mattress, drawing with gunpowder, stretching and clamping the word “Boss" all comes from a very specific impulse, so grounded in Los Angeles typologies. The California coolness of it all is undeniable and easy on the eyes.

I love the way he digests this city. With a wink he recently told the kids running UHaul Gallery to "keep Hollywood weird." He’s 88 and impossibly cool.