Curator, Ana Torok: Ruscha completes his studies in 1960, and the following year he travels through Europe with his mother and brother. He took hundreds of photographs, but they’re not the major landmarks you might expect from an American tourist in Europe. What he ends up photographing are often empty shop windows, or posters, or commercial signage.
Designer, Gail Anderson: That is what we do as designers. We get our cameras and we take pictures of the weirdest things. Like “Oh, look at that wrought iron. Ooh, look at that E.” I love that graphic design is sort of lurking in the background.
Curator, Ana Torok: “Metropolitain” is a word he’s seen on a Parisian subway sign. The work functions almost like a design exercise. You can imagine that Ruscha would’ve had to make these careful studies of words as he was learning typography. He’s rendered the letters in this vibrant green against a red background. The brushwork around the letters echo the forms of this art nouveau lettering that he’s attempting to copy here.
Designer, Gail Anderson: Graphic design is visual communication. It can point people in a direction that they don’t even realize they’re being pointed in sometimes. It’s a thing that you find beauty in but you’re not sure why. And you think, is this art? Is this something else? It can be really subtle.