Ed Ruscha, Documenta 5 (Engberg 66), 1972

Ed Ruscha

Documenta 5 (Engberg 66), 1972

Color silkscreen on wove paper

Pencil signed and numbered from the limited edition of 150 on the front; the artist's copyright ink stamp and copyright on the back

33 1/5 × 23 4/5 inches

Unframed

Catalogue Raisonne: Engberg. 66
Published by Verlag Documenta, Kassel, Germany, with the artist's copyright inkstamp and printer copyright verso; printed at Styria Studio, New York
Pencil signed and numbered from the limited edition of 150 on the front

In 1972, Ed Ruscha was commissioned to design this limited edition silkscreen for the prestigious Documenta 5 exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann which takes place every five years in Kassel Germany. This silkscreen is designed as a swarm of ants spelling out the words "Documenta 5". It is characterized by meticulous draftsmanship. where each ant is depicted at its actual size. And if you look closely, Ruscha has given each one a tiny shadow. (Ruscha also designed a binder-format catalogue for Documenta 5 - the full title of which was Befragung der Realität – Bildwelten heute [“Questioning Reality – Pictorial worlds today”. )

As an artist whose career long preoccupation has been the fall and decline of the American Empire, it's not surprising that his work would also focus on insects -- the creatures that appear with the detritus of society, especially discarded foodstuffs.
Separately, the same year as documenta 5, Ed Ruscha also produced a portfolio of insects, where each print depicts a different insect.

About his "Insects" project, Ruscha explained, "This work involved my indulgence into patterns, I guess. These works emerge from a foray that I’ve always had with little humble objects floating in space. In this case, it happened to be insects....I basically feel like my work comes out of abstract art and that this work is really no exception. I keep thinking of a shotgun blast because most of these works appear to be that way. When you put them up on a wall and look at them, they kind of have that randomness that I appreciated, and I think that’s where that came from.

Several years prior to Documenta 5, Ruscha had produced his famous 1970 "Chocolate Room" (re-created for his 2023-4 MoMA retrospective in NYC). As Ruscha recalled, just as he was finishing up that installation and exiting the room, he saw a trail of ants on their way in, heading straight toward the chocolate. Two years later, that swarm of insects loomed large in the artist's imagination, inspiring an entire portfolio of prints and creating the theme for an international art exposition as represented in the present limited edition silkscreen.