Ed Ruscha Honored at National Arts Awards
By Andrew Russeth
NEW YORK—Balls of fire fell on a dark, deserted lake in a video by Kelly Richardson projected on a screen at Cipriani 42nd Street last night. It was an eerie sight, though few seemed to mind: Jeff Koons and Nancy Pelosi were chatting and posing for photographs together, just one of the unexpected friendships that seemed to blossom at theNational Arts Awards, which included an unusual mixture of representatives from the nation’s art, business, and political intelligentsia.
The ceremony, organized by Americans for the Arts, honored individuals for their contributions to the nation’s artistic life: Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie, philanthropist Sidney Harman, Bank of America (accepted by Chief Marketing Officer Anne Finucane), and Ed Ruscha, who seemed like an ideal — and definitively American — representative from the visual arts world.
Ruscha has wielded the American automobile as an artistic tool, making art from gas stations photographed on trips across the West and images snapped while cruising the Sunset Strip on a Sunday morning. His contributions to the 2005 Venice Biennale showed the exteriors of corporate office buildings and factories, the anonymous workshops of American capitalism.
Author James Frey, who commissioned from Ruscha a work that reads “Public Stoning” after being dragged through the media for his stretching of the truth in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, was similarly affectionate in a video tribute to the artist. “Ed Ruscha is the king of California!” he exclaimed. “Ed Ruscha is the coolest guy in the world.”
For his part, Ruscha seemed pleasantly bemused about the plaudits he was receiving. Handed his award, he pretended to struggle with its weight. “I think it’s a little ironic to pick someone who makes images using colored goo swabbed on with animal fur connected to a piece of wooden stick,” he told the crowd. “It boggles the mind.”