Ed Ruscha on Change in Los Angeles Today (2016)

Edward Ruscha is an American artist who has specialized in painting, drawing, photography, and books. Born in 1937, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles to attend school at Chouinard Art Institute in 1956. In the early 1960s, he contributed to the birth of “pop art” and his work was featured in the famed 1962 exhibition “New […]

Ed Ruscha on Wanting a Product and a Final Result

Heaven Hell @ Ed Ruscha “I have really no direction, I have no plans. I can’t write my future. I can’t write my own history. I’m most fascinated by that one idea of the things that are undone now, will be done in five years time.” – Ed Ruscha   MR. RUSCHA: I think the […]

Ed Ruscha on Route 66, Making Books and “Choppy Movement”

“So in a sense they (books) had no–there was no school of thought, and I felt at that time that it was unexplored. That’s one reason it attracted me.” MR. KARLSTROM: What about your books? This is a last thing that I’d like to at least get started on. You have created I don’t know […]

Ed Ruscha on Studio Life, Domestic Life and Its Tax on the Creative Drive

Dirty Baby, 1977, Graphite and acrylic paint on paper   “I couldn’t mix the domestic life and the free form life, I just couldn’t. They’re sort of difficult to mix.”   MR. RUSCHA: There was one period when I moved to Pasadena. I had a studio at 60 West Colorado Boulevard that was about 20,000 […]

Ed Ruscha – “TateShots” (2013)

Ed Ruscha’s exploration of language and American West Coast culture centred on Hollywood has made him one of the pre-eminent artists of his generation. Since the early 1960s he has channelled his fascination with words and the act of communication into books, print-making, photography, drawing and painting. TateShots went to meet him at his studio […]

Ed Ruscha: “One-Way Street” (2005)

 Edward Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956, delivered by the car trip he and high school friend Mason Williams took in Ruscha’s black 1950 Ford from Oklahoma to the suburban-like stretch of a rapidly developing L.A.   Ed Ruscha’s One-Way Street By Jaleh Mansoor, OCTOBER, Winter 2005, pp. 127–42. Edward Ruscha arrived in Los […]

Anthony Kiedis & Ed Ruscha Driving Sunset Blvd. (2011)

No other artist today personifies the mood and attitude of Southern California like Anthony Kiedis. It’s a distinction he and The Red Hot Chili Peppers have earned for over two decades of music that’s shaped the contemporary sound of the West Coast. Like Ed Ruscha, Anthony Kiedis drew inspiration from Los Angeles and used words […]