Ed Ruscha
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (roo-SHAY; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He gained prominence with his photographs of commonplace subjects in Los Angeles such as cacti and apartment buildings, as well as his paintings that featured isolated words or phrases. Ed Ruscha's art is characterized by graphic simplicity, playful humor, and a keen interest in vernacular.
Ruscha produced sixteen proto-conceptual photographic books from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, documenting the emblems of American life and consumer culture in the latter half of the century. This sampling of stylized gas stations and archetypal landscapes showcases Ruscha’s signature style of deadpan or “artless art.” However, the combination of banal object, places, and words with clever photographic framing techniques and attention to color and painterly precision, suggests a commitment to aesthetic pleasure and a deliberate attempt at art making. At the same time, Ruscha’s images can be read as a distancing from and critical commentary on the traditions of expressive art.
The books by Edward Ruscha in this section were a gift from Paul ’60 and Helen ’62 Anbinder. Their gift included nearly all of Ruscha’s sixteen groundbreaking artists’ books published between 1962 and 1978, many of them signed by the author. The Anbinders’ generous donation of this important set of Ruscha’s work has greatly enriched Cornell’s collections of contemporary artists’ books.
Thirty Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles
They Called Her Styrene
Note: “This book reproduces 575 ‘word’ works by Ruscha.” –Colophon.
Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass
Colored People
Some Los Angeles Apartments
Various Small Fires and Milk
Records
The Spin-offs
Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, was the first of a series of photobooks published by Edward Ruscha. It includes black and white photographs of stations Ruscha saw along Route 66 during road trips between Los Angeles and his hometown of Oklahoma City. Over the last fifty years this deceptively simple book has continued to attract artistic and critical attention.
Ruscha’s collection of photobooks and experiments with the medium of photography serve as inspiration to a long list of contemporary artists who borrow from or pay homage to Ruscha, asking similar questions but through new formats and materials. Attempts at appropriation include some veryclose approximations such as Jeffrey Brouws’s Twenty-Six Abandoned Gasoline Stations, 1992, feature the same language and phrasing as Ruscha’s original title, as well as using the size of the photobook and font on the cover. The content is appropriated as well, though Brouws takes a political tack, pointing to regional and economic strife. Twentysix Plants, 2013, by Susan Mills, expands on Ruscha’s use of repetition and everyday objects in her emphasis on materiality. Twentysix Plants consists of twenty-six pages of handmade paper from everyday plants.
Ruscha’s photobooks have opened a critical space for artists and viewers to think about mass market products, consumerism, reproducibility, and issues of standardization and efficiency. Ed Ruscha is “interested in what is interesting.” He and the artists who follow in his footsteps take interest in what we know best, see often, and often overlook.
Twentysix Gasoline Stations
Twentysix Plants
“This paper is made from plants grown or foraged at Women's Studio Workshop ArtFarm” —Colophon.
“twentysix plants is literally 26 pages of paper handmade from 26 everyday plants.… The names of the plants are digitally cut out from each page to make the text/image and the pages nest one into another, without glue, to make a paperback book. The book references Ed Ruscha's iconic road book Twentysix Gasoline Stations - a slim and elegant paperback. 'twentysix plants' is rough and chunky and celebrates standing in one place. Handmade paper, digitally cut, letterpress, non-adhesive linkstitch binding.” —www.wsworkshop.org
Twentysix Charging Stations
Signed and numbered by the artist. Printed on Epson Premium Presentation Paper with archival inkjet inks, in Century Gothic font, the pages are sewn together with Coptic stitching. This edition was issued in a corrugated paper slipcase. The deluxe edition comes in a custom box. The book’s design and typeface mimic the Ruscha artist’s book Twentysix Gasoline Stations.
Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations
“A Handjob Press/National gas-n-go publication” —Colophon.
Stan Douglas: Every Building on 100 West Hastings
Published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., from Sept. 12-Nov. 3, 2002. Issued with a poster in a pocket at the back.