Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages

October Books

by Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha is among the most innovative artists of the last forty years. He is also one of the first Americans to introduce a critique of popular culture and an examination of language into the visual arts. Although he first made his reputation as a painter, Ruscha is also celebrated for his drawings (made both with conventional materials and with food, blood, gunpowder, and shellac), prints, films, photographs, and books. He is often associated with Los Angeles as a Pop and Conceptualist hub, but tends to regard such labels with a satirical, if not jaundiced, eye. Indeed, his work is characterized by the tensions between high and low, solemn and irreverent, and serious and nonsensical, and it draws on popular culture as well as Western art traditions. Leave Any Information at the Signal not only documents the work of this influential artist as he rose to prominence but also contains his writings and commentaries on other artistic developments of the period. The book is divided into three parts, each of which is arranged chronologically. Part one contains statements, letters, and other writings. Part two consists of more than fifty interviews, some of which have never before been published or translated into English. Part three contains sketchbook pages, word groupings, and other notes that chart how Ruscha develops ideas and solves artistic problems. They are published here for the first time. The book also contains more than eighty illustrations, selected and arranged by the artist.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha was raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his family moved in 1941. In 1956 he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, and had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery. In 1973, Ruscha began showing his work with Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles, and currently shows with Gagosian Gallery.

Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing painting, drawing, photography, and artist's books, Ruscha's work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily. Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach.

Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives that have traveled internationally, including those organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1982; the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in 2002; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004; the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004; and the Jeu de Paume in 2006. In 2005, Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale. Recent exhibitions include “Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting” (organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, in 2009), “Ed Ruscha: Road Tested” (at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2011), and “On the Road” (organized by the Hammer Museum in 2011). “Reading Ed Ruscha” is currently on view at the Kunsthaus Bregenz until October 14.
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Reviews

[Paul-Tristan Auguin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year MoMA held a major Ruscha retrospective. I only knew of him through his 'OOF' painting that the museum has on permanent view. I loved the show so much that I got a membership and went to see it 4 or 5 times with different friends. At this point, Ruscha may be my all-time favorite artist. I got this book then because I couldn't get enough of him, and I finally got around to reading it.

It's fascinating to see how detached Ruscha is from the audience's interpretation of his work. Interviewers will ask leading questions about his intent or the meaning of a piece, and he'll half-answers that he doesn't know, to the effect of "you're the one saying this". It's quite aligned with the distant (but gentle) irony that pervades throughout his work.

I liked to see Ruscha describe his work, his routine of working alone, his artist friends, his influences, the LA scene that was nascent at the time, the Ferus gallery and its now-iconic shows. I liked to see the work behind commissions like Picture without Words or his Words without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go. It makes me want to go out and do art, what more could you want?

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating series of interviews where Ed Ruscha is thinking aloud about art, inspiration and urban landscapes. I've made numerous notes and will certainly be returning to this book. It is a surprisingly easy read, because of the conversational style.

For anything an artist does though, he must be ready to take the consequences. If an artist paints tits and ass he can’t say, “I want my work to be seen only as a religious statement.” He’s got to realize that people are going to see something else. So if you paint something you’ve got to take the consequences for it; you’ve got to take other people’s interpretations and readings of it.

Well, the subject will always go back to things so incredibly, stupidly simple, like the idea of sunset—not only just the sunset, but the word “sunset.” I find that the pictorial look of something almost always stays close to the word that represents it, such as “sunset,” “desert,” “beach,” and then you can keep moving on and on. Pretty soon you’ve pretty well described Los Angeles.

I don’t know what they’d call J. G. Ballard. Science fiction, I suppose. He’s beyond science fiction. I like him a lot. He cuts open the belly of what’s going on and everything falls out on the floor. I like to read writers like him, and it’s kind of aggravating that I don’t have more time to do that. I read what I want to read. I think most people do that. Or I read what I want to see. Don DeLillo is another writer that I like, and Tom McGuane. But, see, I’m after a certain kind of book. I don’t want to read Empire of the Sun. I got halfway through that and dropped it. It’s like he’s painting flowers instead of concrete bunker ramps.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a preface to the interviews, there is a a series of statements and writings. The interviews are chronological, the earliest going back to 1965 with John Coplans for Artforum. After the interviews are "bits," and pages from notebooks.

While reading the interviews, it occurred to me that one is dependent upon having some sort of rapport or conversation with the person who is doing the interview, and that one's response can be based on this. With this in mind, some of the interviews were less interesting in the way the questions were posed, or by what the interviewer thought they wanted. It became evident when Ruscha was more engaged with the interviewer and an actual conversation was happening versus answering a bunch of questions. The conversation between Ruscha and Walter Hopps, (the two had known each other since the late 1950s,) was relaxed and full of interesting information, not necessarily about Ed's work, but about things that one might discuss during a "regular" conversation. Walter was not trying to lead the conversation in a particular direction, but they found things to talk about that they were both interested in. Maybe that's the difference between an interview (when questions are asked) and a conversation. Give me a conversation any time.

[Christopher]

Ed is the man! charmed

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fascinating 116 page interview from '81 is reason alone for those with a serious interest in Ruscha to seek out this book.