Edward Ruscha, designer

Ed Ruscha’s fascination with words and the function of language has spanned his career. In his prints of the late 1960s, he toyed with words as both subject and object, choosing to highlight single words based on their phonetic qualities and evocative power. The word “anchovy,” placed against a monochromatic background with letters seemingly composed from spilled liquid, makes a humorous allusion to a fish swimming in water. By evoking a strange sort of familiarity, Ruscha creates an aura of the surreal that further accentuates the word as a physical entity.