Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) . Double Standard, 1969. Screenprint in colors on wove paper. 25-3/4 x 40-1/8 inches (65.5 x 101.9 c...

Description

Ed Ruscha (b. 1937)
Double Standard, 1969
Screenprint in colors on wove paper
25-3/4 x 40-1/8 inches (65.5 x 101.9 cm) (sheet)
Trial Proof (aside from an edition of 40)
Signed and editioned in pencil lower left; with collaborator Mason Williams' signature lower left
Published by the artist, Los Angeles
Printed by Jean Milant and Daniel Socha, Los Angeles

LITERATURE:
Engberg, 32.

Double Standard by Ed Ruscha feels like an artifact from a time when America was flooring it into the future while gripping the past with knuckles white as moon dust. 1969, a year stained by blinding optimism, rebellion, and despair. Ruscha's piece is not just a work of art; it's a portal to a crossroads America didn't know it was facing, where all the jagged contradictions of a fractured culture collide, as raw and exposed as an open wound. This screenprint is a mythologized L.A. intersection, seen through hazy, gasoline-slicked air, a clash of signs and symbols layered over the sprawling emptiness of the American West, half-swallowed by the oncoming smog of modernity.

The Doors drone from car radios, their lyrics laced with a kind of dread, and Ruscha's California is that same haunted landscape, promising freedom but delivering a desolation that settles deep into your bones. This is the America of late nights at the Whisky a Go Go, with a nausea creeping up from the pit of your stomach, but it's not the Absolut or something you can shake off with another cigarette. Double Standard feels like the visual equivalent of Joan Didion's essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," where every roadside diner, every vacant lot echoes with a lingering sense of loss. You see it in Ruscha's choice of font, that bold lettering against the brown-gradient sky-it's a cheap promise of something you might have been looking for but "Lord, what was it?"

Hunter S. Thompson blows past the station in a cloud of dust, likely on his way to Las Vegas, chasing that same mirage of American identity with a smirk and a scowl. But where Thompson's approach is anarchic, Ruscha's is stark, a visual distillation of the dissonance and quiet menace lurking under the surface of the West Coast dream. It's a place where the iconic Hollywood sign looms on the horizon, yet Double Standard reminds us of the grit that defines the space between the image and the reality, between the polished surfaces of Sunset Boulevard and the grime of ordinary life-a life choked by the weight of conflicting ideals and empty promises.

Ruscha's piece is America's liminal space, a tension between who we thought we were and what we were becoming. The two conflicting signs hovering over the hot asphalt of Double Standard embody the bitter edge of a country racing forward without looking back, both a relic and a prophecy. It's as if Ruscha were depicting the collective disillusionment of a generation discovering that the highway of dreams might just loop back into itself. It is a harbinger of malaise that would hit in the following decade-a callout to those lost at the crossroads, hurtling forward but haunted by the signs they pass at each exit, wondering if they've been heading the wrong way all along.


More information about Ed Ruscha. See also: Ruscha, Ed, Edward Ruscha, Ruscha, Edward Joseph Artist.



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