FROM RUSCHA WITH LIGHT.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

When the Getty Center asked artist Ed Ruscha to help decorate its new $1 billion home, nobody mentioned anything about a particular theme or subject.

Instead, Ruscha was at liberty to pursue many of the ideas and motifs that have haunted his work during the past 25 years: miracles, beams of light, windows, and the perception that what's left unsaid or ambiguous may be far more powerful and illuminating than what's spelled out in black and white.

As its title semi-ironically suggests, nothing much is spelled out in Ruscha's ``Picture Without Words,'' a monumental acrylic painting that recently went on permanent display at the center in Brentwood. But its spare elegance hardly means the new work is devoid of symbolism or emotional content.

Measuring 23 feet high, ``Picture Without Words'' shows a rectangular beam of light serenely gushing from an overhead window and pouring onto the floor below. Though it depicts no holy messengers or religious iconography, the massive painting - as tall and majestic as a church altarpiece - exudes an atmosphere of spirituality and euphoria that Getty Museum director John Walsh describes as ``pictorial rather than philosophical.''

The painting was hoisted by forklift last November onto a wall in the lobby of the Harold M. Williams Auditorium, a 450-seat lecture hall where the Getty also hosts regular theater and dance performances. It's the inspiration behind ``Ed Ruscha's Light,'' a complementary exhibition of two dozen paintings and works on paper exploring the theme of light in Ruscha's work. The exhibition will be on view in the museum's West Pavilion through Sept. 13.

Supported by a 750-pound aluminum frame, ``Picture Without Words'' is a quietly ecstatic meditation on light's miraculous ability to invest everything it touches with clarity and calm. While obviously alluding to the way light has been represented in Renaissance painting, medieval architecture and so on, Ruscha's work is purged of any theological signposts. Dancing with the natural light that streams through architect Richard Meier's sprawling stone-and-travertine-marble campus, the painting's tranquil incandescence speaks for itself.

Wearing jeans and a blue denim jacket, Ruscha himself projects a similar easygoing eloquence while discussing the high-profile commission.

``People might think when they see this painting that there was a subject in mind, or rules, or limits,'' said Ruscha, who was born in Omaha, Neb., in 1937 but has lived in Los Angeles for more than 40 years. ``They just showed me the space. They didn't say, `Make it holy, make it loud, make it colorful.' ''

``I appreciate those sorts of commissions,'' he added wryly.

Indeed, throughout its 25-year history, the Getty's reputation has rested on Old Master paintings and Greek and Roman antiquities, which made up the bulk of its collections at the Getty's previous home, a faux-Roman Malibu villa.

``Picture Without Words'' is one of three major commissions for public spaces at the Getty Center, which opened to the public last December. The others are Robert Irwin's three-acre walk-in ``Central Garden'' and Alex Smith's ``Taste,'' a pun-happy mixed-media installation in the Getty's indoor restaurant, which looks out on the Pacific Ocean.

Underscoring the tension

Collectively, these contemporary works help establish a dialogue with the Getty's pre-20th-century European treasures, underscoring the tension between classical and modern, permanence and impermanence, in Meier's designs.

It seems Ruscha had those tensions somewhere in mind when he set about planning ``Picture Without Words'' after receiving the commission in December 1996. Among the works in ``Ed Ruscha's Light'' are a series of five pastel drawings he made as studies, with variations on the motif of light projected through a window-like opening. Also included in the exhibition are the results of a test Ruscha made using a spray gun to lay down thin acrylic strips of paint in various pastel hues, which coalesce into the single beam of ``Picture Without Words.''

``I've found that I have to make these steps in order to make the progression from one thing to another,'' Ruscha explained. ``I knew that I wanted something that was ambiguous, but timeless.''

While Ruscha uses ``Picture Without Words'' to expand on certain preoccupations, the painting also marks a departure from his previous work, Walsh said.

Raised a Roman Catholic in Oklahoma City, Ruscha first came to Los Angeles to study at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 to 1960. After quickly developing a reputation for his prints, paintings and collages, he became associated with the Ferus Gallery group, whose fellow travelers included the abovementioned Irwin, Edward Moses, Ken Price and Edward Kienholz - formidable artists and iconoclasts all.

The works in ``Ed Ruscha's Light'' date back to the early 1970s, when the bold flippancy of pop art was an obvious influence on him. In ``Gospel'' (1972), Ruscha puts a spin on Warhol's ironic way of using commercial brand names as if they were holy texts. In this instance, the single word ``gospel'' (the word of God) plummets across the canvas, while arrows fly upward along a trajectory that may represent human spirituality and belief.

``Miracle'' (1974) is Ruscha's title design drawing for a 28-minute film he made in 1975 starring singer-actress Michelle Phillips and artist Jim Ganzer. The movie, a sly urban fable about an auto mechanic's unlikely redemption, expresses a secularized yet dramatic view of the possibilities of spiritual conversion. It hardly can be coincidental that, in the 1980s, Ruscha began turning toward images of light cast on a dark wall or floor, as if from a hidden camera projector.

He takes this motif to its logical conclusion in ``The Long Wait,'' a 1995 acrylic in which a slanting beam of light projects the words ``The End'' in Gothic lettering. It's as if we're the audience at some other-worldly cineplex, watching our lives flash before our eyes.

Heightened, theatrical quality

Typically, these images have a heightened, theatrical quality, like a stage. Yet no angelic intermediaries appear. No divine intervention takes place. Instead, light itself is celebrated as the eternal agent of enlightenment and understanding.

Over the years, Walsh noted, there's been a gradual winnowing down of text in Ruscha's art, building to ``Picture Without Words.'' After all, words don't always mean what they say, or say what they mean.

And whatever meaning they do possess in these jittery pre-millennial days may be bent and twisted mercilessly in the centuries ahead.

``There's a certain misgiving about putting words on a canvas,'' Walsh said. ``Words may mean nothing in 50 years.''

While Ruscha doesn't consider most of the exhibition's works ``religious,'' he'll concede the strong influence of his Catholic upbringing. Recently he was one of three artists represented in the exhibition ``Three Catholics'' at a Manhattan gallery, along with Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. Ruscha executed a series of collages depicting the stations of the cross.

Was he ever an altar boy?

``I was an altar boy wannabe,'' Ruscha replied, grinning.

A wannabe who's apparently decided that light, in all its glorious emanations, is sufficient miracle for anyone.

THE FACTS

What: ``Ed Ruscha's Light.''

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Brentwood.

When: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through Sept. 13. Admission to the Getty Center is free, but parking reservations are required; parking is $5 per car. Only visitors with advance parking reservations are assured admission due to site capacity limitations during the Getty's opening year.

Information: Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) ``Picture Without Words'' is one of three major commissions for public spaces at the Getty Center, Brentwood.

(2) ``Electric Girl'' is part of the exhibit through Sept. 13 at the J. Paul Getty Museum.