Heavy Industry
Ed Ruscha
ED RUSCHA, 1962. OIL AND PENCIL ON CANVAS.
Random phrases become mantras, and simplicity becomes confusing. This is at the heart of Ed Ruscha’s genius: an ability to use typography and paint to elevate words into something considerable. Heavy Industry is inherently vague; painted on a used canvas rotated ninety degrees, where the ghosts of previous words are scarcely visible through thick brown paint, it provides no answers, and asks no direct questions and yet leaves the viewer with an unshakeable sense that something is being said. The industry in question is not explicit, it’s weight is up to us to decide and so Ruscha is able to use the vernacular and tactics of advertising to, by removing the context, force us to focus on linguistics and meaning in a way that explicit commercialism is not able to. Ruscha changed his typeface to suit the words, and here, in heavy, almost gothic, serifed font, the painting seems to inhabit the very phrase it proclaims - every element speaks to ‘Heavy Industry’, while leaving it entirely up to us to decide what that means.