ED RUSCHA: PHOTOGRAPHER [Hardcover]

Margit Rowell (Author), Ed Ruscha (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

Ed Ruscha's relationship to photography is complex and ambivalent. The world-class painter--and author of a 1972 New York Times article called "'I'm Not Really a Photographer'"--has been known to refer to his work in this second medium as a "hobby," despite considerable, persistent critical interest. Whether he likes it or not, the small albums of plainly-shot, snapshot-sized images he produced in the 1960s and 70s, including Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, intrigued his contemporaries and earned him an unshakable reputation. How? His subject matter was neither purely documentary nor solely artistic, in fact it was stereotypical and banal, with motifs drawn from the car-dominated western landscape. That rebellious material, along with his serial presentation, made for a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect with Beat Generation overtones. The combination attracted artists and critics both, especially while serial logic was prominent in Pop art and Minimalism, and then retained that interest later as serial work became prominent in Conceptual art. Critics have remained attentive for decades, and Ruscha's influence remains apparent in new work in Europe and North America. Ed Ruscha, Photographer departs from earlier collections to explore how these images--and all of Ruscha's work in disciplines including painting, drawing, printmaking and photography--are guided and shaped by a single vision.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roni Horn was born in 1955 in New York, where she continues to live and work. Since earning her MFA from Yale University in 1978, she has shown her sculptures, installations and photographs extensively throughout the world. She has had solo exhibitions at the Dia Center for the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her recent publications include Dictionary of Water, Cabinet of, Wonderwater (Alice Offshore), and Index Cixous (Cix Pax). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Steidl (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3865212069
• ISBN-13: 978-3865212061
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Arts & Photography > Sculpture

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The medium is the message, September 6, 2006

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ED RUSCHA: PHOTOGRAPHER (Hardcover)

A well-produced book of Ruscha's photo work to coincide with his Whitney Museum exhibition. In the first forty pages Margit Rowell (who organized the exhibition) writes about Rusha's life and influences: an intriguing mixture of European commonplace; culture and heavy doses of American commercialism and print pop culture. I thought, though that she found it hard going to explain some of his work within the context of fine art. Ruscha doesn't easily fit into a high culture setting and to my mind some of his endeavors are just plain mundane, the 'Babycakes' book for instance (I fancy Ed might well agree with me, too) but he is prepared to have a go at anything: painting, drawing, screen-printing, photography, publishing, films and clearly some great art has come out of all these different mediums.

The photo section of the book (114 pages and beautifully printed in 175 screen) runs from some of his first photo works in the late fifties, his European trip in 1961 to the last one, a color print presciently titled The End#4 from 1998. Annoyingly some of the images in this section could have been larger on the page, frequently the white space overpowers a photo that has plenty of detail. Included are eleven of my favorites, his aerial shots of LA parking lots, actually taken by photographer Art Alanis one Sunday in 1967, when the lots were empty.

Not having seen any of Rusha's famous self-published books I was surprised to read in Rowell's essay that some of them have many blank pages. Ruscha's creative ideas only stretched to so many single images but a book has many pages, so why not just leave some of them blank and maintain the medium of a book. Apart from blank pages there was always the option of just changing the subject. His 1964 'Various Small Fires' features fifteen snapshots of an incendiary nature (a Zippo lighter, a match, domestic gas range, a smoking cigarette, for example) in a forty-eight page book but there is a sixteenth shot of a glass of milk. Ed said, in 1965, "Milk seemed to make the book more interesting and gave it more cohesion". Go figure!

The back of the book lists the exhibits, a selected bibliography, chronology and finally the index. Overall an excellent overview of Rusha's photography and confirming to me, at least, that he is a bit of a creative enigma.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ED RUSHA'S RED BOOK. photographer, January 17, 2007

By 

Pier Francesco Gnot "WILDEYE" (FLORENCE-ITALY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ED RUSCHA: PHOTOGRAPHER (Hardcover)

It's a brilliant book for understand the rusha's research in photography,what he tooks from pictures and transform in art language.This books is really well done with good text and the immages have a chronologically order and related to the text too.I'm italian and so i have to reed that book ,because speaks about an author that isn't really famous in italy...i think is impossible to find something like that rusha's book in my language
Sorry for my bad english but this book is good for suare!!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ruscha: Photographer, April 8, 2011

By 

Nathan J. Feller (Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ED RUSCHA: PHOTOGRAPHER (Hardcover)

This is a great book to get if you are interested in Ed Ruscha's artwork. I also think that this is an excellent view on his photography and books that he self-published in the 60's. I am a big fan of his work and I really was impressed on how the book discusses (and shows images) of his books that he created. There isn't too much out there that's written on his artist-books as much as there is on his paintings. So, because of that, I really like and recommend this book.