193. Ed Ruscha, Hollywood
After graduating high school in 1956, Ed Ruscha left the more-or-less real West—he grew up in Oklahoma—and drove Route 66 to its terminus in the place where the mythic West was invented. Within a decade he had a studio with a direct view of the Hollywood sign, which began to appear in his works. Like Monet, Ruscha made multiple versions of the same view, although, as he said, “I don’t have any Seine River like Monet. I looked outside my window and I saw the sign ‘Hollywood’ and it became the subject matter for me.”
Erected in 1923 as a temporary advertisement for a development called Hollywoodland, the original sign was hauled to its site by mules. The “LAND” was removed in 1949 to reflect the district, not the housing development—by that time, the flat construction propped against a hill had become the emblem of the movie business and the city itself. “I always thought that was a weird way to represent the city—cut-out letters on a hillside,” Ruscha said. “Why are they desecrating this beautiful hillside with that crap?”
He depicts the sign with ironic grandeur, stretched long and low against the sky like a Cinemascope screen. In reality—as with most things from the movies—it’s a bit of a let-down: it sits mid-slope, not silhouetted at the crest of the hill, and because it faces south, it’s rarely lit from behind. But Ruscha’s project is about the myth, not the banality.
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.
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