America Her Best Product, from Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence

Ruscha manipulates the context and thus the meaning of words to produce works that parody language as communication. He chooses his words from a repertoire of banal phrases, onomatopoetic words and slang circulating in American vernacular. By rendering visual a reserve of words and phrases that tend to fuction verbally Ruscha successfully captures elements of absurdity and redundancy that underlie language and communication. In this print, the artist critiques the way in which America packages itself through its cultural products. His choice of the words, "Made in the USA," offers an ironic comment not only upon the ubiquity of mass-produced products in contemporary culture, but also upon Ruscha's own work as a product of an artistic movement inseparably tied to American conumerism culture.