The Obamas are obviously fans. A canvas by Ed Ruscha was among the artworks that were selected last week to hang on White House walls. I Think I’ll was one of the now trademark word paintings of a pioneering artist probably best known for treating language as if it were a still life or landscape. This week a survey show of his career, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, opens at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Ruscha (pronounced rew-shay) has an insistently experimental talent. His output has ranged from drawings and prints through photography to books and films. But this survey focuses only on the paintings. His career began in the mid-Fifties after the artist, a hitchhiking refugee from the Bible Belt, discovered in “the ultimate cardboard cut-out town” of Los Angeles a backdrop for all that he wanted to say about modern American life. The Hayward show traces of the inventive progress that turned an ad-agency employee into one of the Pop pioneers.

“I’m interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn’t deserve being glorified,” said Ruscha. As he moved away from his Abstract Expressionist training, he set about transforming anything into art — from single words to common phrases, from Chiclets chewing gum to pharmaceutical capsules, from company trademarks to travel brochures, and roadside gas stations to city grid plans.

The sprawling Hayward show has something of the spread-out, low-rise feel of an LA streetscape. It encourages the visitor to trace the development of a talent that looks at the ways in which our vision of the world is dictated by mass-produced signs. The spectator moves from the graphic immediacy of such monosyllabic word paintings as “Oof” or “Boss” to the longer clichéd phrases that reveal language as the cultural filter through which our world is perceived. Groupings of works provide a particular focus: his fascination with the camera, for instance, that split-second freeze-frame.

But do you actually need to see these paintings? Part of their point is that they can themselves be reproduced. Once you have appreciated the stark clarity of the design, smiled at the visual gags (in “It’s Only Vanishing Cream”, for instance, the letters seem to fade even as you look), felt that trite uplift of spirit in front of the painting of the Paramount film mountain, why stay? The most rewarding part of this show will be the time that you spend thinking afterwards. Ruscha unsettles the world with his deadpan wit.

From October 14 to January 10, 2010

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