Ed Ruscha: Ship Ahoy

Published by Crown Point Press, this two-color hard-ground etching by Ed Ruscha is one of a series produced in 2023 and depicts the two words that comprise its title. This short phrase is rendered in a style similar to that of the artist’s “swiped” word paintings, which likewise suggest that their verbal subjects are in rapid motion. As a group, the prints also begin to hint at a loose narrative involving movement or travel; in Ship Ahoy, the titular phrase, which is used to hail another ship or vessel, is rendered in dashed lines of black and blue, conveying a sense of arrival.

Ruscha has been building a lexicon of signs, symbols, images, and words drawn from vernacular American culture since his start as an artist in the 1960s. Over the course of a more than sixty-year career, and across a broad range of mediums, his visual utterances, sounds, and concepts have become embedded in the national ethos. Ruscha applies a wry verbal and visual wit to his chosen subjects, exploring the frequent disconnect between ideas and their expression to celebrate what he calls “everyday noise.”