Art: Ed Ruscha and Big Oof Energy at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

Words by Christine Stoddard
​Photos by Aaron Gold

I had every intention of reviewing An-My Lê's "Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. As my City College of New York sculpture professor Colin Chase once told me, I'm a "serious artist" and a "serious thinker." (He also called me Miss Thang, but that's another story.) Shouldn't I gaze upon this conflict related body of work and come up with something poetic about Vietnam and the U.S. military-industrial complex?

​Thankfully, it is a sign of maturity to know when to excuse yourself from a task. Given that my visit occurred on my birthday, I decided to cling to the wisdom that one acquires by living another year. Rather than inundate myself with more thoughts of war-themed photography, I'd inundate myself with thoughts of conceptual art. So I opted for Ed Ruscha first and foremost during my most recent MoMa escapade. I needed escapism and humor, and "Now Then" is a big, honkin' retrospective. Did I see An-My Lê's exhibition? Yes, and the "Fourteen Views" installation juxtaposing images from Vietnam, U.S., and France was a chapel I hope to reflect upon another time. If nothing else (and there's a lot else), go see it for that.

Now onto Ed Ruscha's exhibition for the paragraph I'll give it. ​​Conceptual art has a reputation for being cheeky. Sometimes, this is annoying. With Ruscha, it's usually charming. He's obsessed with typography in a way that not just designers get. To borrow from Ruscha, he just happens to "paint words like someone else paints flowers." There's a level of technical precision to his work that's tough not to admire: the straight lines, hard edges, intentional and graphic approach to painting. Before Wine Mom signs took over Target, there was Ed Ruscha, summoning spells and mantras for light-hearted wall hangings. He has a knack for choosing seductive words for the canvas. "Oof" is probably the most relatable and Instagrammable piece you can pick for our current moment. Ruscha created "Oof" in 1962 and reworked it in 1963. 60 years later, humanity is still exhausted, just maybe more so. 

Across social media, conversations about Israel and Palestine rage and burn. At Columbia University, where I am studying oral history, the atmosphere is tense—in individual classrooms and across campus. Another day, another protest. I came to Columbia to continue my explorations started at City College: untangling my personal experiences as a member of the Salvadoran diaspora and understanding the civil war in El Salvador. War is constantly on my mind. The more I think about it, the more people I interview, the more I read, the more I film, the more I see the parallels between El Salvador and Vietnam. Yet that's precisely why I needed to swim through the Ed Ruscha exhibition. Sometimes, we need brightness. Sometimes, we just have to laugh. Oof.

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