The Works of Edward Ruscha

by Ed Ruscha (Painter), Henry T. Hopkins (Foreword), Anne Livet (Introduction)

Shows Ruscha's paintings and drawings of Hollywood and discusses his approach to art

Genres: Art

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Edward Ruscha is a towering figure of American Pop Art whose multidisciplinary practice redefined the visual language of the late twentieth century. Born in Omaha and raised in Oklahoma City, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he was mentored by Robert Irwin and Emerson Woelffer. Rising to prominence in the early 1960s alongside the influential Ferus Gallery group, he gained international acclaim for his "word paintings"—monosyllabic oils like OOF, BOSS, and HONK—which isolated typography against monochromatic backgrounds, reflecting his background in commercial art and a fascination with the "deadpan" irreverence of the Pop movement. His work is inextricably linked to the vernacular of Southern California, capturing the sprawling aesthetics of Los Angeles through iconic depictions of the Hollywood sign, stylized gas stations, and continuous photographic surveys such as Every Building on the Sunset Strip. A master of diverse media, Ruscha has famously experimented with unconventional materials, including gunpowder, blood, axle grease, and various food products like chocolate syrup and caviar, to create works that bridge the gap between commercial graphics and fine art. His influence extends significantly into the "New Topographics" photography movement and conceptual art, challenging traditional views of the urban landscape by dispassionately documenting America’s suburban structures. In 1962, his work was featured in the groundbreaking New Painting of Common Objects exhibition, widely considered one of the first Pop Art surveys in America. Throughout his storied career, he has been the subject of major retrospectives at the world’s leading museums, including the Centre Pompidou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Ruscha has also contributed to public spaces through monumental commissions for the Getty Center and the Miami-Dade Public Library. In recognition of his enduring impact, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in both 1970 and 2005, and in 2013, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His artistic reach even touched popular culture, with his typeface "Boy Scout Utility Modern" and his collaboration on cover art for Paul McCartney and The Beatles. Beyond his own production, Ruscha has served as a trustee for the Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, underscoring his leadership within the arts community. His unique "cool gaze" remains a quintessential chronicler of the American West, blending the cinematic proportions of Hollywood with the mundane reality of the open road. Today, his works are held in premier permanent collections worldwide, cementing his legacy as a defining artist of the postwar era who transformed the way we read, see, and experience the modern environment.

Reviews

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always loved Ruscha. (And his name is pronounced Roo-shay.) His paintings are "cool," and by that I mean that they are generally impenetrable and distant, like a Bergman film, but without the Scandinavian cold (the paintings keep Bergman's opaque sky but lose the withering Freudian relationships). Ruscha's paintings are also "hot," and by that I mean they are full of visual bravado: frozen speed, stilled fire, and atmospherics like sunsets, fog, skylines, and intense weather.

I like Ruscha enough to have made my own 3-D versions of one of his paintings:

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Anyway, I love his paintings of objects even more than I love his famous pictures of gas stations and disembodied words - maybe because I'm used to the words and stations, but am still a little shocked by stuff that doesn't look like "Ed Ruscha."

But I'm writing this because I just bought this book, used, and remembered that I read it years ago when I was studying with Dave Hickey. Dave Hickey wrote Ed Ruscha's catalog essay; I studied with Hickey in Vegas, and I looked at / read this book those many years ago. I remembered something about sexy girls and something about burning norms and standards, but little else. About an hour after I got the book, a friend came in my store, saw the book, got excited, and bought it from me. (I own a used book store.) So I had to convince her to loan it to me; then took it home, put away the other books I'm reading, and sat down on the couch to re-aqaint myself with an old friend. All so I could return my friend's newly bought book tomorrow.

As I flipped through the book, I felt my typical "book store owner's regret" that I was losing yet another book that I would very much like to own. But after spending the last several hours pouring through Ruscha's paintings while occasionally talking to Patricia and listening to WFMU, I sat down and plowed through Dave Hickey's essay, and as usual for him, it's a damn good essay that meanders all over, but with a purpose, a little more jazz riff than rock and roll solo, which ping pongs between Merleau-Ponty, sexy starlets, the opacity of considerate people, and -there it is- Ed Ruscha's burning of norms and standards. See, Ruscha has painted a Standard Oil gas station, Norm's Restaurant, and the LA Museum of Art on fire. It's a bit of a stretch, but it works on a gut level, and then Hickey tightens his claim and says that as Ruscha is burning norms and standards, he's elevating the typical and ordinary, which again, just feels right. Finally, the essay ends with Hickey and Ruscha's pointing out that doing something, while not knowing what you're doing, can often produce something worth calling "art." What is assumed in the doing is that the collected practice and accumulated intellect will burn norms and standards, and will result in something that is that is not just cool and not just hot but is, well... beyond words.

Which is a damn good place to end.