Rarely uttered aloud, the work "oof" belongs to the world of comic strips, not the great literature and art, and particularly not to painting. We expect the emphatic word to appear wrapped in a speech bubble with an exclamation point at the end, but Ruscha has dedicated a large-scale painting to it as if it were worthy of veneration. Of his work from this period Ruscha has said, "I was interested in monosyllabic word sounds that seemed to have a certain comedic value to them." In capital letters, "oof" floats against an empty blue backdrop, suspended somewhere between image and language and between iconicity and absurdity.