Ed Ruscha, Photographer
2nd Edition
Published on 12. July 2013
Book
Hardback
184 pages
978-3-86521-206-1 (ISBN)
Description
Although known for his paintings and drawings, California artist Ed Ruscha has also attracted critical attention for his
photography. A new exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Ed Ruscha, Photographer, departs from earlier analyses
to explore how the artist's different disciplines-painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography-are guided and
shaped by a single vision.
Ruscha's relationship to photography is complex and ambivalent and his work is difficult to define. He has referred to
his photography as a "hobby" but from the outset it has drawn considerable critical interest. The small books of photographs
that Ruscha produced in the sixties and seventies earned him a reputation as an underground artist among his
peers, and have influenced subsequent generations of artists in Europe and North America. The photographs were
snapshot size, with an amateurish quality that intrigued his contemporaries. Neither purely documentary nor solely artistic,
their subject matter was stereotypical and banal, with motifs drawn from sites in Southern California or the western
United States. This, combined with their serial presentation, created a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect with
Beat Generation innuendos and inspired interest among artists at a time when serial logic was prominent in Pop art and
Minimalism, and later in Conceptual art.
photography. A new exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Ed Ruscha, Photographer, departs from earlier analyses
to explore how the artist's different disciplines-painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography-are guided and
shaped by a single vision.
Ruscha's relationship to photography is complex and ambivalent and his work is difficult to define. He has referred to
his photography as a "hobby" but from the outset it has drawn considerable critical interest. The small books of photographs
that Ruscha produced in the sixties and seventies earned him a reputation as an underground artist among his
peers, and have influenced subsequent generations of artists in Europe and North America. The photographs were
snapshot size, with an amateurish quality that intrigued his contemporaries. Neither purely documentary nor solely artistic,
their subject matter was stereotypical and banal, with motifs drawn from sites in Southern California or the western
United States. This, combined with their serial presentation, created a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect with
Beat Generation innuendos and inspired interest among artists at a time when serial logic was prominent in Pop art and
Minimalism, and later in Conceptual art.
More details
Person
Margit Rowell is an art historian, critic and museum curator working mostly in Paris and New York. Working independently
today, her earlier long-term affiliations were with the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she organized exhibitions of
classical modern and contemporary artists (among them Joan Miró, Constantin Brancusi, Sigmar Polke, and Luciano
Fabro). In 2004, she organized a major exhibition of the drawings of Ed Ruscha for the Whitney Museum of American
Art, which traveled to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and inspired the present study of Ed Ruscha's photographs.
today, her earlier long-term affiliations were with the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she organized exhibitions of
classical modern and contemporary artists (among them Joan Miró, Constantin Brancusi, Sigmar Polke, and Luciano
Fabro). In 2004, she organized a major exhibition of the drawings of Ed Ruscha for the Whitney Museum of American
Art, which traveled to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and inspired the present study of Ed Ruscha's photographs.