Ed Ruscha
Standard Study # 2, 1962
Sheet: 13,7 x 25,7 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
gift of the American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc.,
Leonard A. Lauder
© Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha
Doheny Towers
Edition of 25 photographies
25,2 x 20,2 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel
© Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha – L.A. Apartments – Kunstmuseum Basel The exhibition ‘Ed Ruscha – Los Angeles Apartments’ at the Kunstmuseum Basel presents photographs, photo books and drawings by the American artist Ed Ruscha (b. 1937). 8 June – 29 September 2013.]]>
Source: Kunstmuseum Basel
Ruscha has frequently used photographs as the point of departure for his work, treating them essentially as readymades. Gas stations, photographed in 1962 on his trips between Oklahoma City and Los Angeles, demonstrate his unpretentious approach to this medium. He has used his photograph of the gas station Standard Station Amarillo, Texas for numerous prints, drawings, watercolors, and paintings. The motifs of these works are informed not only by the medium of photography but also influenced by film, particularly Cinemascope. Studies in color, executed in 1962 and 1963 for the large-format paintings “Standard Station Amarillo, Texas” and “Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights”, stand in contrast to the artist‘s monochromatic drawings of the apartments. They demonstrate his approach to color, to a palette reduced, as in advertising, to a few emblematic colors: red, yellow, and blue.
The monochromatic, graphite drawings of the Los Angeles Apartments resemble black-and-white photography and are, in fact, reminiscent of prints on photo paper. Photography is thus the prerequisite of the drawings inasmuch as it provides the architectural motifs. However, the treatment of light and projection play a role not only in photography but also in the drawing process itself.
A total of over 60 works by the artist will be on display: photographs, photo books, and drawings. These include loans from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the National Gallery Washington D.C., the Cleveland Museum of Art, Tate Millbank, London, the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, the Gagosian Gallery New York and private collectors.
Related content
Ed Ruscha: ‘Apartments, Parking Lots, Palm Trees and Others’ – Sprüth Magers Berlin (exhibition, 2010)
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