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Ed Ruscha

Then & Now

October 27–December 23, 2005
Beverly Hills

Ed Ruscha: THEN & NOW Installation view

Ed Ruscha: THEN & NOW

Installation view

Works Exhibited

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005 142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005

142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005 142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005

142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005 142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005

142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005 142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005

142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005 142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

Ed Ruscha, THEN & NOW, 2005

142 gelatin silver prints in a wood box, 27 ½ × 39 ⅜ inches (69.9 × 100 cm), edition of 10; 6 APs

About

Gagosian, in conjunction with Steidl Verlag, is pleased to present Ed Ruscha: Then & Now, a set of photographic prints that documents Hollywood Boulevard, first in 1973 and then thirty-one years later in 2004. This exhibition also marks the ten-year anniversary of Gagosian Beverly Hills.

Between 1962 and 1978, Ed Ruscha produced seventeen influential artist’s books, usually self-published and in small print runs. Perhaps the most well known of these books is Every Building on the Sunset Strip, published in 1966, which shows a famous stretch along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. In 1973, Ruscha followed the same procedure, this time documenting Hollywood Boulevard, producing two continuous panoramic views of the north and south sides of the street. Loading a continuous strip of black-and-white 35mm film into his motor-drive Nikon F2 and then mounting it on a tripod in the bed of a pickup truck, Ruscha drove back and forth across the entire length of the street, shooting it frame by frame. The negatives were developed, but never published.

In 2004, the artist reshot Hollywood Boulevard. The same type of camera equipment was used to rephotograph the street, but this time on 35mm color-negative film. In Then & Now, the original 1973 panoramic images run parallel to their 2004 versions, documenting the changes that have occurred over three decades.

This time the photos are in color, but that is a small difference compared with the many buildings which have changed, been altered, disappeared. The famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with its sidewalk of movie stars’ hand and footprints is now a large complex with a giant archway; parking lots lay where buildings once rose; mom and pop shops are now chains. Hollywood Boulevard’s sedate, old-style glamour of 1973 has a new facade of uniformity and tourist amnesia.
—Karen Marta, Domus, September 2005

This Ed Ruscha multiple is a set of 142 photographic prints housed in a handmade wooden crate signed and numbered in an edition of 10 (with 6 AP).

Black-and-white photograph: Donald Marron, c. 1984.

Donald Marron

Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.

Alexander Calder poster for McGovern, 1972, lithograph

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.

Ed Ruscha, At That, 2020, dry pigment and acrylic on paper.

“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.

Andy Warhol cover design for the magazine Aspen 1, no. 3.

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.

A painting with gold frame by Louis Michel Eilshemius. Landscape with single figure.

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.”

River Café menu with illustration by Ed Ruscha.

The River Café Cookbook

London’s River Café, a culinary mecca perched on a bend in the River Thames, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2018. To celebrate this milestone and the publication of her cookbook River Café London, cofounder Ruth Rogers sat down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the famed restaurant’s allure.

News

Photo: Kate Simon

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

Installation view, Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, January 11–October 4, 2020. Artwork © Ed Ruscha

galleryplatform.la

Ed Ruscha
Drum Skins

May 28–June 30, 2020

Gagosian is pleased to present recent paintings by Ed Ruscha online for galleryplatform.laFifty 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