Amazon.com Review
In a 1976 drawing by Ed Ruscha, the word "Promise"—--spelled out in ribbon-like script—--is suspended at an oblique angle against a delicate gray background and bathed in a gauzy white light. Somehow, this image perfectly sums up the hopeful feeling that success is right around the corner. Ruscha's ability to give concrete form to the inner life of words and images from popular culture has made him a rare breed of artist---a critic's darling whose work also fascinates ordinary art lovers. Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha collects more than 200 of Ruscha's coolly mysterious works on paper in a handsomely designed volume marred only by a hard-to-read gray typeface. The odd title comes from a remark the artist once made. He uses cotton puffs and swabs to rub gunpowder (which creates those smoky grays) or pastel into the rag paper. Author Margit Rowell emphasizes the influence of photography and film on Ruscha's visual outlook---as well as his training in graphic design and the Los Angeles "landscape" of billboards glimpsed from car windows. Rucha, who is also known for his paintings and his idiosyncratic photo books (depicting serial images of gas stations, parking lots and other banal sights), has been working on paper since the late 1950s. Rowell tracks the various themes and styles of his drawings, while essayist Cornelia Butler adds additional art world context. Although Ruscha has been called a Pop artist and a West Coast Surrealist, Butler sees him as "an essentially Conceptualist artist who seeks to render ideas as information." She singles out his "deeply eccentric nihilism...filtered through a keen humor." This book accompanies an exhibition of Ruscha's work on paper organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (June 24–Sept. 26, 2004). -—Cathy Curtis
From Publishers Weekly
Gunpowder, tobacco, coffee, rose petals, lettuce and blood are just a few of the unorthodox materials used by California-based artist Ed Ruscha, whose work is featured in this sumptuously produced monograph of drawings. Produced in conjunction with a career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, this catalog features over 200 reproductions of the artist’s sly and meticulously rendered drawings of stock phrases from pop culture (e.g. "Hollywood Calif," "Babycakes," "20th Century Fox"). The drawings are accompanied by two rather disjointed essays by exhibit curator Rowell and MoCA LA curator Butler. Rowell’s essay focuses on the artist’s working process, explaining that one reason Ruscha drew with gunpowder was because it was an easier medium to manipulate than graphite. She also points out some salient links between the artist’s drawings and his interest in photography. Butler takes a more conceptual approach, examining the content of Ruscha’s drawings and his working materials through a theoretical and thematic lens. While both essays offer welcome insights into the work of a highly mercurial artist, Rowell’s reliance on stiff art historical jargon and Butler’s disorganized presentation make for dense reading. Part of their difficulty may be that the drawings themselves, with their sparklingly light irony and deft, masterly touch, have strange, otherworldly resonances that are difficult to pin down with words. Ultimately, it’s the strength of the work itself that makes this book a must-have for any Ruscha fan. 250 illus.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
