Edward Ruscha facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Edward Ruscha
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Ruscha in 2016
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Edward Joseph Ruscha IV
December 16, 1937 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
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| Education | Chouinard Art Institute |
| Known for | Painting, photography, printmaking, film, book art |
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Notable work
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| Movement | Pop art |
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| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1971) |
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (/ruːˈʃeɪ/, roo-SHAY; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist. He is known for his connection to the Pop art movement, which uses images from popular culture. Ruscha has created art using many different methods, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also famous for making special artist's books. Today, Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California.
Contents
Becoming an Artist: Early Life and Education
Edward Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His family later moved to Oklahoma City, where he lived for about 15 years. From a young age, Ruscha loved drawing cartoons, and this interest stayed with him as he grew up.
In 1956, he moved to Los Angeles to study art at the Chouinard Art Institute. This school is now known as the California Institute of the Arts. After finishing his studies, Ruscha worked as a layout artist for an advertising company in Los Angeles. He also worked for Artforum magazine from 1965 to 1969, using the nickname "Eddie Russia." He even taught art at UCLA for a short time.
By the early 1960s, Ruscha became well-known for his paintings, collages, and photographs. He was part of a group of artists at the Ferus Gallery.
Ruscha's Art: What He Made
Ruscha became famous for paintings that included words and phrases. He also made many photographic books. His art was inspired by the Pop art movement, which often used everyday objects and images in a new way. His flat, text-based paintings are linked to both Pop Art and the beat generation.
Inspirations for His Work
When Ruscha was in art school in 1957, he saw a painting called Target with Four Faces by Jasper Johns. This artwork really impressed him and made him want to focus more on painting instead of graphic design. Other artists like Marcel Duchamp and Edward Hopper also influenced his unique style. Ruscha once said, "Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head."
Southern California in His Art
Even though Ruscha sometimes says it's not true, the look and feel of Los Angeles and Southern California are very important to his art. For example, he created a book called Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). This book has a continuous series of photographs of a two-and-a-half-mile part of the famous Sunset Strip boulevard.
His paintings like Standard Station (1966) and Hollywood (1982) also show his connection to the visual style of Southern California. The Hollywood film industry also influenced his art. For instance, the mountain in his "Mountain Series" looks like the Paramount Pictures logo. His painting Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962) shows the 20th Century Fox logo, and its size reminds you of a movie screen.
In 1966, Ruscha made a silkscreen print of Standard Station. He used a special printing method to create a smooth change of colors in the background. Later, he made more versions of this print. In the 1980s, Ruscha started a series of "City Lights" paintings. These showed grids of bright spots on dark backgrounds, making them look like cities at night from above.
Paintings with Words
Like other Pop artists, Ruscha's art training included commercial art. His interest in words and how they look (typography) became the main subject of his paintings, prints, and photographs. He started making word paintings in 1961 in Paris. He would paint single words like "ACE," "BOSS," or "HONK" on plain backgrounds without other images.
Since 1964, Ruscha has often painted words and phrases. These sayings are often funny or a bit strange, and they often refer to popular culture or life in Los Angeles. When asked where he got his ideas, Ruscha said, "Well, they just occur to me; sometimes people say them and I write down and then I paint them."
From 1966 to 1969, he made "liquid word" paintings. In these, words like "Adios" or "Steel" looked like they were spilled, dripped, or sprayed onto a flat, single-colored surface. He also made drawings using gunpowder and graphite where words looked like curling paper ribbons.
In the 1970s, Ruscha began using whole phrases in his art, which became a key feature of the artists who came after Pop Art. In the early 1980s, he painted words over images of sunsets, night skies, and wheat fields. Later, words appeared on his mountain-range series, which he started in 1998.
Since 1980, Ruscha has used his own special all-caps font called "Boy Scout Utility Modern." In this font, curved letters are made square, like the Hollywood Sign. In many of his paintings from the mid-1980s, he included black or white "blanks" or "censor strips." These suggested where "missing" words would have been.
Surreal and Strange Art
Some of Ruscha's paintings from the mid-1960s, like Angry Because It's Plaster, Not Milk (1965), show everyday things in a very strange way. He called these "bouncing objects, floating things." For example, a very large red bird and a glass might float in front of a simple background. This style is similar to Surrealism, an art movement that explores dreams and the unexpected. A fish and a broken pencil often appear in these artworks.
Art from Unusual Materials
Throughout the 1970s, Ruscha experimented with many different materials for his drawings, prints, and paintings. These included gunpowder, vinyl, blood, red wine, fruit and vegetable juices, chocolate syrup, tomato paste, and even grass stains!
In 1969, he created a collection called Stains, which had 75 sheets of paper marked with different liquids. For a collection of screenprints in 1970, he printed rhyming words in a fancy font using edible things like pie fillings, bolognese sauce, and chocolate syrup. Ruscha also made word paintings on moiré fabric and silk because they absorbed stains well. For example, A Blvd. Called Sunset (1975) was made with blackberry juice on moiré.
One famous example of his use of unusual materials is Fruit Metrecal Hollywood (1971). This silkscreen print of the "Hollywood" sign was made with apricot and grape jam, and a diet drink called Metrecal on paper.
Light as a Motif
In the mid-1970s, Ruscha created a series of pastel drawings called Miracle. These drawings showed bright beams of light coming from dark, cloudy skies. The black pastel wasn't completely solid, allowing the paper to shine through and create a glowing effect.
In the 1980s, he started drawing mysterious patches of light cast by an unseen window. These patches served as backgrounds for phrases like WONDER SICKNESS (1984). By the 1990s, Ruscha was making larger paintings of light shining into empty rooms, sometimes with funny titles like An Exhibition of Gasoline Powered Engines (1993).
Special Art Projects and Commissions
Ruscha has been asked to create many large-scale artworks for public places. One of his first big projects was a huge mural at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in 1966. In 1995, he made a seventy-panel artwork that wrapped around the Great Hall of the Denver Public Library.
In 1985, he was asked to design a series of fifty murals for the Miami–Dade Public Library. These murals featured the quote "WORDS WITHOUT THOUGHTS NEVER TO HEAVEN GO" from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
In 1998, the Getty Center asked Ruscha to create a nearly thirty-foot-high painting called PICTURE WITHOUT WORDS for their lobby. He also designed the cover art and typography for Paul McCartney's album McCartney III in 2020 and for the Beatles' song "Now and Then" in 2023.
Artist's Books
Between 1962 and 1978, Ruscha created sixteen small artist's books. These books are artworks themselves, often featuring simple photographs of everyday things. Some of his most famous books include:
- Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963)
- Various Small Fires (1964)
- Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966)
- Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968)
These artist's books have been very influential for other artists. For example, photographer Charles Johnstone created Twentysix Havana Gasoline Stations (2008) as a tribute to Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations, but set in Cuba.
Photography in His Art
Photography has always been important in Ruscha's career. He used photos for many of his books, which often showed exactly what their titles described. His photographs are very direct and simple, showing subjects that people don't usually think of as art, like boxes of detergent or cans of paint. These photos often don't have people in them, focusing on the shape of buildings and their place in the environment.
Films and Documentaries
In the 1970s, Ruscha also made some short films, like Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975). Miracle tells the story of a car mechanic who is magically changed while fixing a 1965 Ford Mustang. Ruscha also appeared in a few other films and documentaries about art and artists.
Art Shows and Exhibitions
The Start of "Pop Art"
In 1962, Ruscha's work was shown in a very important exhibition called New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum. This show is considered one of the first "Pop Art" exhibitions in America. His first solo art show was in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1966, his work was shown in Europe for the first time in London.
Major Art Shows (Retrospectives)
Ruscha has had many large museum shows that look back at his entire career. These are called retrospectives. Some of these include:
- 1983: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (which traveled to other museums)
- 1989: Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris
- 2000: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- 2005: Ruscha represented the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale, a big international art show. For this, he showed a series of paintings called Course of Empire.
- 2009: London's Hayward Gallery had a show focused only on his paintings, called Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting.
- 2016: The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco had a large exhibit called Ed Ruscha and the Great American West. This show focused on how the American West inspired his art. When he was 18, Ruscha drove from Oklahoma to Los Angeles and was inspired by gas stations and billboards along the way.
- 2023-2024: The Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a major retrospective called ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, showing over 200 of his artworks.
For the 1970 Venice Biennale, Ruscha created an installation called Chocolate Room. Visitors saw 360 pieces of paper covered in chocolate, hung like roof tiles on the walls. The whole room smelled like a chocolate factory!
Where His Art Is Kept (Collections)
Many major museums and art institutions around the world own Ruscha's artworks.
- The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco bought his complete collection of prints and working proofs in 2000.
- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art also has a large collection of his prints.
- In 2003, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles acquired his famous Chocolate Room.
- The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York owns over 300 of his photographs.
- The Art Institute of Chicago has more than 40 of his works.
- His art can also be found in the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Awards and Recognition
Edward Ruscha has received many awards and honors for his art:
- 2001: He was chosen to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
- 2004: He became an Honorary Royal Academician of London's Royal Academy of Arts.
- 2008: He received the Aspen Award for Art.
- 2013: He was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world.
- 2019: He received the J. Paul Getty Medal, a major art award.
His work has also been recognized in other ways. The band Talking Heads used Ruscha's 1974 painting Sand in the Vaseline for their album cover. In 2010, President Barack Obama gave a signed lithograph by Ruscha to the British Prime Minister, chosen for its red, white, and blue colors.
Personal Life
Edward Ruscha is married to Danica Ruscha, also known as Danna. They first married in 1967, divorced in 1978, and then remarried in 1987. They have two children, a son named Edward "Eddie" Ruscha Jr. and a daughter named Sonny Bjornson.
His Lasting Impact (Legacy)
Ruscha's work has had a big impact on the art world. In 2011, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute acquired over seventy of his photographs and his "Streets of Los Angeles" archive. This archive includes thousands of negatives and documents related to his famous book Every Building on the Sunset Strip. This project has continued for over four decades, documenting many major streets in Los Angeles.
In 2013, the Harry Ransom Center acquired a collection of Ruscha's personal journals, sketches, notes, and materials related to his artist's books and short films. These collections help people study and understand Ruscha's artistic process and his important place in modern art history.
Images for kids
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Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, by Ruscha
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Fruit Metrecal Hollywood by Edward Ruscha, 1971, Honolulu Museum of Art
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Ruscha's books on display as part of a 2018 exhibition
See also
In Spanish: Edward Ruscha para niños
