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Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Ed Ruscha. Although most of the featured photographs were originally used in the creation of Ruscha’s books (1963–78), the artist has printed several new images from his numerous negatives and contact sheets in preparation for this exhibition.
Ed Ruscha began taking photographs while a student at the Chouinard School in Los Angeles in 1959. The artist’s conceptual use of photography in books takes its cue from the livres d’artiste made by such artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall. However, Ruscha’s books mark a significant departure from traditional formats as they are assembled but not composed, clean but not slick, and were meant for broad distribution.
Ed Ruscha’s books document the artist’s surroundings and journeys “on the road” between 1963 and 1978. The first book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, was inspired by a journey along Route 66 between Ruscha’s native Oklahoma and Los Angeles. Primarily visual, the books are composed of series of nondescript photographs that follow seemingly basic and random thematic guidelines such as “gasoline stations,” “apartment buildings,” “swimming pools,” “vinyl records,” “palm trees,” and even “burning small fires.”
These books marked the beginning of Ruscha’s conceptual foray into photographic documentation and book making, which has continued to be an important aspect of his body of work.
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Flags
Gillian Pistell writes on the loaded symbol of the American flag in the work of postwar and contemporary artists.
Donald Marron
Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.
The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters
Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.
“Things Fall Apart”: Ed Ruscha’s Swiped Words
Lisa Turvey examines the range of effects conveyed by the blurred phrases in recent drawings by the artist, detailing the ways these words in motion evoke the experience of the current moment.
Artists’ Magazines
Gwen Allen recounts her discovery of cutting-edge artists’ magazines from the 1960s and 1970s and explores the roots and implications of these singular publications.
Eilshemius and Me: An Interview with Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha tells Viet-Nu Nguyen and Leta Grzan how he first encountered Louis Michel Eilshemius’s paintings, which of the artist’s aesthetic innovations captured his imagination, and how his own work relates to and differs from that of this “Neglected Marvel.”
News
Artist Spotlight
Ed Ruscha
September 16–22, 2020
At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist . . . who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Ruscha’s formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular have evolved in form and meaning as technology alters the essence of human communication.
Photo: Kate Simon
galleryplatform.la
Ed Ruscha
Drum Skins
May 28–June 30, 2020
Gagosian is pleased to present recent paintings by Ed Ruscha online for galleryplatform.la. Fifty years ago, Ruscha purchased a set of vellum drum skins from a leather shop in Los Angeles. He has continued to collect these vintage objects, and since 2011 he has used them as canvases for the works on view in his solo exhibition Drum Skins at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
Installation view, Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, January 11–October 4, 2020. Artwork © Ed Ruscha