A, B, C (1987) was created by Ed Ruscha for his first public commission, received in 1985—to paint a series of murals for the main floor of the new, Philip Johnson–designed Miami-Dade County Public Library. “It was the first time in my life as an artist that I was faced with communicating with the public,” Ruscha recalled four years later, in 1989. “I realized that I could not approach this project like the works I paint for myself. I wanted to make people think about where they were, about the purpose of a library and about the function of language.” Comprising three half-moon-shaped lunettes that feature black grounds each inscribed with one of the three beginning letters of the alphabet, A, B, C urges viewers to contemplate the very foundations of language, the individual units that comprise the larger linguistic system that organizes human communication. 

It was Ruscha’s foregrounding of language in his work—single letters, individual words, and longer phrases—that initially brought him to the attention of the project’s search committee. Composed of arts professionals from around the country and assembled by the Metro-Dade Art in Public Places Trust—the organization spearheading the commission—the committee sought an artist whose practice involved words and the visual expression of language, believing such work would not only reflect the library’s functional purpose, but also create a unique coupling of artwork and site. And indeed, for Ruscha, language is about more than verbal expression; it is a living material with a physical presence that can be decontextualized and manipulated, much like paint or clay. Some committee members questioned Ruscha’s appropriateness for the project, claiming his work was too cerebral and ambiguous for public art, which traditionally presented clear, easily accessible messages in beautiful, if not purely decorative, compositions. In the end, however—and after a second vote—Ruscha was awarded the commission, ultimately producing eight panels to encircle the rotunda as well as dozens of lunettes that were dispersed throughout the rest of the building; A, B, C comes from this latter body of work.

In 1987, Ruscha received approval to move forward with the commission’s second phase—creating lunettes for the blind arches scattered throughout the library’s first and second floors. He painted a total of sixty-two such canvases, many of which feature groupings of words or phrases. A, B, C is one such group, as is Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How, and I, You, He, She, It, We, and They, among others. The lunettes feature black, white, and gray backgrounds, a palette that recalls the appearance of ink on paper and, consequently, reinforces their connection to the library setting. Importantly, they expand the interactive nature of the rotunda murals to the rest of the library, with each lunette becoming part of a linguistic scavenger hunt that encourages discovery and interpretation. Some placements reveal the artist’s whimsical, idiosyncratic logic—for instance, Here, There, and Everywhere are located around the corner from a bank of elevators, the evocation of movement in the former realized in the latter—while others court ambiguity and imagination.

In 1989, Ruscha drove all sixty-two lunettes from his studio in California to the library in Miami, stretching them on-site before overseeing their installation. Crucially, he did not have any preconceived notion of where each painting would hang. “There was not a fixed idea that couldn’t be changed,” he explained. “My intention was to make more so that I would have more editing possibilities.” Ultimately, he hung fifty-six of them; A, B, C were among the six lunettes that the artist decided to keep in his own collection.

Ruscha’s Miami-Dade Public Library project remains strikingly relevant today, nearly forty years after its unveiling. In this age of social media and rapid-fire communication, reminders about the importance of sincere reflection and critical thinking are perhaps more important than ever. Indeed, his choice of subject for the rotunda—“Words without thoughts never to heaven go”—seems, perhaps, an eerily prophetic exhortation, as libraries become battlegrounds for politics-driven culture wars. Ruscha’s paintings, both those connected with the commission and his greater oeuvre in general, remind us of the power of words—the danger they pose if wielded without thought, and the changes they can incite if carefully and considerately exercised. As the introductory letters of the alphabet, and therefore the first building block of language itself, A, B, C represents the very foundations of this urgent call to arms.