Ed Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Three: 1983-1987

by Ed Ruscha (Artist), Robert Dean (Editor), Lawrence Weiner (Contributor)

Ed Ruscha, one of the most influential artists working today, and one of the great West Coast Pop artists, didn't start out as a painter. It was under the influence of teachers including Robert Irwin, Richards Ruben and Emerson Woelffer that he gave up his original goal of becoming a commercial artist to focus on fine art. This third volume in the ongoing documentation of his entire corpus of paintings captures him in his stride. As throughout the series, each painting, reproduced in color, is given a double-page spread with exhibition and bibliographic history. The artist's sketches for paintings are reproduced in facsimile. This volume contains 165 works, and, of particular note, includes a major public commission for the Philip Johnson-designed Miami-Dade Public Library, which was a turning point for Ruscha. Paintings done immediately prior to this commission can be seen as a summation of the artist's earlier preoccupations and techniques, while those done after the commission show a major shift in direction occasioned by the use of airbrush techniques to produce dark, atmospheric canvases with links to film noir and to such Los Angeles noir writers as Raymond Chandler. With an introductory essay by Robert Dean, a personal tribute by artist Lawrence Weiner, a chronology and a comprehensive bibliography and list of exhibitions.

Genres: Art

558 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2007

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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