The artistic development of the world artist Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha - what art movement can he be assigned?

Ed Ruscha is one of the artists who express themselves in several media that the American artist works as a painter and graphic artist, as a photographer and book artist and as a filmmaker .

Especially in the field of painting and as a photographer and book artist, he has created pioneering works, because of which he is now one of the most important representatives of Pop Art .

The world in which Ed Ruscha was born

"Ed" Ruscha, who is called Edward Joseph Ruscha with a complete name, was born on December 16, 1937, in the same year as Rita Süssmuth, Dieter Thomas Heck, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins, so he recently celebrated his 85th birthday.

The year 1937 was actually all about world war for plenty of later born, and it was really not so nice year to see the light of this world: the world looked at the global political development in a rather breathless and perplexed manner, in which the signs of a war, which are unforeseeable in its dimensions, are becoming increasingly clear at the time.

In Europe, a hidden unit of the German Wehrmacht, the "Legion Condor" , fascist leader Franco, had also supported the Spanish civil war and the northern Spanish city of Guernica rated the ground in an unprecedented and non -international terrorist act.

The non -fascist Europe and the United States want to prevent continental war and remain almost without reaction to German power policy, but the Spanish civil war has already mobilized artists and intellectuals: George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway work as a war rapporteur in Spain and are involved in the government, who was attacked by Franco.

How much Ed Ruscha in his youth came from the tense world situation and the subsequent World War II is a matter of more precise biographical consideration. However, he is probably lucky enough to remain largely spared from traumatic touch with the war: he was born in Omaha/Nebraska, which is pretty much in the middle of America, in 1941 the family moved two states further south, to Oklahoma.

These places of residence are both in the middle of the core area of ​​the United States, if someone kept little from the acts of war that went into the world from the United States, it was probably the population that lived here. The time of its growing up also has to be classified a little more: When the United States entered war on December 8, 1941, Ed Ruscha's fourth birthday was just imminent, and he was not even 8 years old at the end of the war.

Obviously, an orderly school attendance was possible throughout the entire time in Oklahoma. Because it is transmitted that Ed Ruscha dealt with the drawing of comic strips as a ten -year -old (1947) and that in 1956 he completed the classes of high school in Oklahoma City.

It is a completely unacceptable assumption, but maybe one of the absurdities of war was also responsible for his love for comics : after the attack on Pearl Harbor, fear of impending attacks with chemical weapons, and on this occasion the government began to distribute gas masks among the population.

In order to present the scary utensil to the smallest Americans, you actually came up with the idea of ​​making gas masks with Mickey Mouse face for children, with the approval of Disney , and one of the few preserved Mickey Mouse gas masks is exhibited in the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma ...

Ed Ruscha's passion for comics and comic should definitely prove to be life-determined, the reason that the boy from the country went to the center of the Disney world after Los Angeles (actually wanted to go to San Francisco, but where no training was offered in commercial art). Probably not a bad decision for him, the artist lives Los Angeles

So Ed Ruscha came to art ...

In 1956 it was when Ed Ruscha made his enthusiasm for comic drawing the basis of his training choice: he went to Los Angeles, studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and attended the school for Walt Disney illustrators .

Ed Ruscha has experienced the legendary ancestors of the Disney studios personally, at least in the illustrator school, but the Disney brothers Walt (the father of Micky Maus) and Roy (the older brother and with Walt founder of the Disney studios) at this time also took over Chouinard in the California founded Walt Disney Company Institute of the Arts .

Ed Ruscha's training can be clearly shown how much "comic" was always part of art - at the California Institute of the Arts, "film and animation" only one of the departments (in addition to art, music, dance and theater). Ed Ruscha also not only drawn funny characters during his training, but also dealt thoroughly with the abstract expressionism (which had developed in New York from 1940 and now, around 1960, also reached the opposite side of the United States).

... and so he became an artist

Ed Ruscha - The Tension of Words and Images | Artist interview | Crime scenes

This contact with the abstract expressionism is even considered fairly formative of Ed Ruschas' art, and is said to have clearly dominated his first audience success. Ruscha was able to present his art in 1963 for the first time in a solo exhibition to a larger interested audience.

This happened in the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles , a gallery in the best traditional sense that has helped many artists for their first solo exhibitions: in 1957 the assembly artist Wallace Berman to start here, in 1958 the sculptor Billy Al Bengston and the painter Ed Moses received their first chance in 1959 and Ceramic artist John Mason for the first time, in 1960 the forms and prints of Kenneth Price to the world, in 1962 painter Llyn Foulkes and minimalism artists Larry Bell bei Ferus, and in 1963 Ed Ruscha.

This gallery also brought Ruscha in contact with new influences that referenced his love for comic: Ferus had started to New York art of the time West coast art (i.e. on the west coast of local artists) And so Ferus was also the first gallery to bring an individual exhibition from Andy Warhol to the west coast, the famous artist, who at that time brought the "Pop Art" into the art world.

Work show of the Pop Art works of art by Ed Ruscha (on Pinterest)

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At the beginning of the 1960s, other artists were also exhibited in the Ferus Gallery who had or made Pop Art on the subject. According to Jasper Johns (himself is not seen as a pop art artist, but is considered an important pioneer) and the second most important pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein .

Because the Ferus Gallery was perhaps traditionally supported in its concern to support young artists, but traditionally in the taste of art, this gallery was not at all, gallery director Irving Blum wanted to bring the latest contemporary art developments from New York as soon as possible to the distant west coast.

At Ferus, one was modern, other styles born by this gallery, which differed from the rest of the home art world, were the "Finish Fetish" style with shiny surfaces and the "Light and Space" art that worked with perception phenomena. Pop Art itself was actually a very contrary influence for Ed Ruscha, because Pop Art in the United States described the conscious departure from the painting of abstract expressionism, which Ruscha has so far realized.

But the pop art artists were the artists who finally raised the comic into the spheres of gallery art , and so it is actually not surprising when Ed Ruscha found the pop art artists sooner or later. Ed Ruscha later compared the gallery with a jazz album, on which a lot of different voices were combined under a plate label: each with a very decided way to see the world and art, so this place was unusually lively and inspiring.

In any case, this gallery had made this gallery possible for the young artist Ed Ruscha, and the vital art and artist life, which he experienced in the haze of this gallery, significantly influenced his artistic development, right down to the works that are now assigned to pop art art.

At that time, Ed Ruscha also started developing as a photo artist , from 1962 he began to publish photo books, with editions of a few hundred or a thousand specimens.

It was also a photo book that laid the basis for Ruscha's status as a cult artist: "Twentysix Gasoline Station" , published in 1963, became a cult object during the 1960s, and a little later it was considered the first modern artist book, the big influence on the artist book culture that was just developing in America at the time.

The book entitled "Twentysix Gasoline Station" , "26 petrol stations" , did exactly what the title suggests: Ruscha photographed all 26 petrol stations on a visit to his parents along the Route 66, and printed them in his artist book, each with a subtitle, the brand and place.

Ed Ruscha: 'Twentysix Gasoline Station' (1969)

The second artist book with cult status followed in 1966: "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" is a photo book Leporello in which every building that was found on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood is shown.

Both projects are now seen as milestones in photo and concept art .

Ed Ruscha's Photography Books | Artist interview | Tatshots (video contribution to his artists' books)

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

Owner and managing director of Kunstplaza . Publicist, editor and passionate blogger in the field of art, design and creativity since 2011. Successful conclusion in web design as part of a university degree (2008). Further development of creativity techniques through courses in free drawing, expression painting and theatre/acting. Profound knowledge of the art market through many years of journalistic research and numerous collaborations with actors/institutions from art and culture.

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