Ed Ruscha | Zoot Soot

Ed Ruscha

Zoot Soot

Chicago, USA: Bert Green Fine Art, 2015

27.7 x 34.5 cm.

Edition of 40 [+ 8 AP] signed, numbered and dated copies

Alongside eight Artist's Proofs, only forty copies were produced, and only twenty of those were available for public sale. The work sold out almost immediately, with many of the prints quickly finding their way into auction. The work was published by Bert Green Fine Art in Chicago, and produced by  Aardvark Letterpress in Los Angeles. 

"Zoot Soot 2015 is a monochromatic etching on paper by the American artist Ed Ruscha. Along with Rain Gain 2014, Real Deal 2014), it takes a two-word idiom as its subject matter. In Rain Gain, Real Deal and Zoot Suit, rhyming words in white against a ground of light grey, blue and red respectively are split across a central divide and recede downwards into the centre of the page in a symmetrical configuration that recalls the drama and dynamism of movie posters. In Zoot Soot, with its phonetic variation on the spelling of Zoot ‘Suit’ to provide the symmetry of the double ‘o’, the two words are arranged one on top of the other with all four ‘o’s entirely cut out of the paper. These works are part of a group of eighteen works on paper produced by Ruscha between 2011 and 2015 (Tate P20484–P20501). Produced in a range of sizes and editions, they encompass techniques including lithography, mixography and etching. They are drawn from different bodies of work, revealing the artist’s aptitude as a printmaker, his ongoing exploration of signage, his engagement with his hometown of Los Angeles and his humorous approach to a typically American vernacular language. Fifteen of the prints (dating from 2013 onwards) have been produced specifically for Tate and are, like this one, inscribed by hand with the words ‘Tate Proof’.

Ruscha produced Rain Gain, Real Deal and Zoot Suit using the technique of ‘flat bite’ or ‘open bite’ etching, where large areas of the plate are exposed to acid, leaving uneven impressions at the edge of these areas where ink can collect during printing. The irregularities of tone density in the outline of the letters are a result of this process. To produce Zoot Soot, Ruscha first made thick sheets of paper by hand, adding small lengths of coloured thread to the pulp, before using a hand-operated die cutting machine to punch out the letters that made up his design. The finished sheets were then numbered, signed and stamped.

These works are representative of Ruscha’s humorous observation of the role of wordplay in contemporary advertising strategies. While works such as Real Deal repurpose expressions commonly used in American sales industries, others such as Zoot Suit are more layered in meaning, evoking the characteristic 1940s outfits and thus the communities of the African Americans, Mexican Americans and Italian Americans that wore them, as well as the complex history of interracial conflict and rioting in wartime Los Angeles. Zoot Soot is a tribute to the memory of the late Richard Duardo (1952–2014), a prominent printmaker and key figure in Los Angeles’s Mexican American community."

- Tate Britain