Ed Ruscha And Photography

by Ed Ruscha

Since the beginning of Ed Ruscha's career in the late 1950s, photography has been both an inspiration and a source of discovery. This volume thoroughly traces Ruscha's engagement with photography and reveals how his photographic works shed new light on his career as a whole. In preparing this volume and the related exhibition, the artist has worked closely with Whitney Museum curator Sylvia Wolf to share his artistic process and reveal the importance of photography to his art in other mediums. Wolf remarks, "Ed Ruscha's books are among the most original achievements in the art of the 1960s and 1970s, and are the photographic works he is most known for. There have, however, been pictures tucked away in boxes in his studio and photographs that are unpublished or rarely seen, which shed light on Ruscha's career as a whole." This volume considers all facets of Ruscha's photographic production, selecting from the Whitney Museum's exceptional recent acquisition of a major body of the artist's original photographic works and unique early pieces.

Included are reproductions of original prints from Ruscha's photographic books Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires and Milk, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles, Royal Road Test, Babycakes with Weights, and Real Estate Opportunities , as well as several photographs Ruscha never published, in particular 16 images from Twentysix Gasoline Stations not included in the book. Unique vintage photographs from a seven-month tour of Europe in 1961 are featured; photographs from Austria, England, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia feature many motifs and stylistic elements that have marked Ruscha's work over the past 40 years, in particular his interest in typography and signage, and his strong graphic sensibility.

Genres: Photography, Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2004

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.
Source:

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What was needed was a book focusing on Ed Ruscha's photographic works and this is the book. The photo image of Ruscha is very much part of the paintings and conceptual thinking of his work. I think his 'Sunset Strip" book is a modern masterpiece that needs to be known to a greater audience. In the early 60's he took photographs of both sides of the street, and it's a fantastic document as well as a moving statement of sorts about urban life and its after-effects.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

The photographs are not styled because they are tools that give you information about what things look like flat, "a vehicle," without excessive style, without nostalgia, so that you can change it with paint. So although almost none of these photographs is interesting enough to look at again, they had to be looked at enough times to...get tired of the world you could see through a camera. I think that the photographs were a stand-in for words until those started showing up in the paintings.

The writing style of the book is depressingly academic, once again, a slave to names with biographies and their objects. Ruscha is interviewed at the end and he is expressive of puzzlement and simplicity.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Ruscha is not often known for his photography. This is a beautiful catalog of his photograph, sometimes juxtaposed with his paintings, drawings and collages. This is a wonderful book.