A multidisciplinary survey of 200 works reveals how Ruscha’s alienation from organized religion proved to be useful for his deconstruction of art myths and shibboleths.
Ed Ruscha, intrepid explorer of language and image, prefigured a digital culture of words on the move. A retrospective at MoMA shines new light on his groundbreaking career: the books, the paintings, the room made of chocolate.
“I was a little bit tired of making conventional pictures”: The artist on recreating his bittersweet installation, first seen in 1970, for the Museum of Modern Art.
THE DISTANCE from the Knox-Less service station in Oklahoma City to Bob’s Seaside Service, not so far from the Santa Monica Pier at the terminus of Route 66 both pictured in Ed Ruscha’s 1963 artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations was about 1,400 miles. It’s a drive Ruscha has taken many times since he traveled it with Mason Williams in Ruscha’s lowered 1950 four-door Ford, with throaty Smitty Glasspack dual muffler, following their graduation from Oklahoma City’s Classen High School in 1956.1The trail from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles via Route 66 holds a mythic place within the lore of the