The artist Ed Ruscha and his mark on the world

Ed Ruscha's artistic triumph

Now the artist's success was unstoppable; the art scene around the world eagerly embraced further artist photo books and, above all, his very distinctive pop art artworks.

Ed Pop Art is both painterly and graphic, possessing a high recognition value through the continuous integration of typography, and with its aesthetic and clear, almost cool style, it is also something of a prophet of a coming age.

Ruscha participated in the São Paulo Biennial and the Paris Biennial Venice Biennale in 1970. He was invited to documenta in Kassel in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1992, and his work was featured again at the Venice Biennale in 2005. These appearances at major and prestigious art exhibitions, with their corresponding dates, impressively demonstrate how Ruscha's great success has continued almost seamlessly into the present day.

Ed Ruscha – International Exhibition Presences

Ed Ruscha boasts a remarkable exhibition history with over 300 shows held at venues across the globe. His artwork is represented in over 60 art collections , including, of course, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the Ace Gallery and County Museum of Art of Los Angeles, in his hometowns.

But also in many other places where art is appreciated: Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, Hara Museum and National Museum of Western Art Tokyo, Harvard University Art Museums Cambridge, Migros Museum Zurich, Museu Berardo Lisbon, Museum of Communication Frankfurt, museum in progress Vienna, National Gallery Washington, Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane, Art Gallery Vancouver and in the Museums of Contemporary Art of Chicago and Los Angeles, Roskilde, Zagreb and Sydney – these are by no means all the exhibition venues, but we have probably already traveled around the world once.

Around two decades after his first exhibitions, the major retrospectives also began to attract international attention : in 1982 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in 1989 at the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, in 2002 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Madrid and in 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

In the same year (2004), two Ruscha exhibitions were held concurrently at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and in 2006 an exhibition dedicated specifically to Ruscha's photographic work opened in Paris, touring to other venues. Similarly, the comprehensive retrospective that most recently introduced Ed Ruscha to German audiences began  the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Ed Ruscha's exhibition “Double Americanisms” in the main hall of the SECESSION in 2018/2019 presented a fascinating selection of 57 recent works. These included innovative digital prints, a diverse series of painted language images, as well as artfully designed book objects and artist's books, displayed in vitrines.

How much does a “Ruscha” cost?

Well, at Sotheby's New York's November 2012 contemporary art auction, one of Ruscha's works was considered a flop: While the entire auction, with many world-class offerings from the fields of abstract expressionism and pop art, set a new record with sales of just over 375 million dollars (around 285 million euros), Ed Ruscha's painting "Ship Talk"  from 1988, described as mysterious and dark, was returned with a fictitious bid of 850,000 dollars.

However, in February 2012, it sold for almost 770,000 pounds (almost 1,175,000 dollars or almost 900,000 euros) at Christie's in London , just so you know roughly where the prices are, should you wish to inquire about a work by the artist at one of the galleries represented by Ed Ruscha.

In this case, you have a good selection of galleries available that you could contact; besides the German galleries Artax in Düsseldorf , Galerie Jürgen Becker from Hamburg and Sprüth Magers Berlin, there are around a dozen galleries in other European countries and over 30 galleries in the USA that represented Ed Ruscha or still do today.

If you don't want to spend quite so much, you could, for example, be satisfied with a color serigraph by Ed Ruscha; one of five proof prints of the work “It's in the stars.” from 1978 sold for “only” €3,125 in 2012. A copy of the famous photo leporello “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” (created in 1966) can be had for just over €1,500, and a full-page lithograph called “Insect Slant” from 1973 is available for under €1,500, albeit with a small stain.

Reception and appreciation of Ed Ruscha

Most art critics who judge influence and talent in the art world consider Ruscha the creator of groundbreaking works and one of the most important representatives of Pop Art. Also known as a conceptual artist, Ruscha is continually honored with retrospectives; in 2012 he curated his first exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna— his own.

Ruscha has undoubtedly had a decisive influence on the Los Angeles art scene connection to the film industry, at least geographically, as his studio is located in Culver City, which in Ruscha's youth was, alongside Hollywood, one of the leading film centers. Culver City escaped a period of decline thanks to the establishment of the Columbia Pictures , now Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., part of Sony Pictures Entertainment and one of the seven largest US film companies, a so-called "major."

In this studio, however, no comic drawings are created anymore, but rather quite unique paintings and rather ironic word paintings. Ed Ruscha sits “right in the middle of the film world” and yet has retained the gaze of a quiet, neutral, even mocking observer who, in his “letter paintings,” almost slyly highlights the banality he discovers in the rituals of big-city life and the works of mass media.

Ruscha has never followed the mainstream; he is fascinated by books and writing, and this is likely why he has designed 16 artist's books and repeatedly referenced them in his work, as reading is such an important part of his life. Critics who seek to establish historical connections highlight Ruscha as a precise chronicler of an era in which life is accelerating and individuals are bombarded daily with ever more images. But as a frequently revered idol of young artists, this unconventional artist will undoubtedly continue to have an impact today.

On what is probably the world's most important "ranking of art" , namely the list by Artfacts.net Ltd., which is divided according to artistic success, Ed Ruscha is in 9th or 10th place; anyone who is interested in art for social reasons, or has to be, likes to have a "Ruscha" at home; only the one that hangs in Barack Obama's home got there for a different reason (more on that below).

Ruscha's pictures hang in most of the world's major museums, his photo books have become legendary, all in all Ed Ruscha can truly be described as a "world star of art" .

Ed Rusha in American society

In addition to his art, Ruscha demonstrates a wide range of commitments to the society in which he lives; for example, he has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is dedicated to promoting education and research and to supporting projects that aim to contribute to the well-being and peaceful coexistence of diverse population groups within the United States.

He is also a member of the “Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” and campaigned for the election of the first black president “Obama for America”

The artist Ed Ruscha, art and life

Ed Ruscha gives the impression that he loves what he does, but doesn't take himself or his art unhealthily seriously. That's why his artistic rise to fame wasn't particularly high-profile, and why Ed Ruscha didn't and doesn't constantly make headlines. He mostly remained in the background of international attention, and quite a few art lovers are surprised when they delve into Ed Ruscha's work and discover the sheer size of his output as a painter and draftsman over half a century.

His lettering art is often provocative, almost always quite clever, sometimes brooding, sometimes stimulating, sometimes visionary. His lettering images become metaphors for a fast-paced and superficial world, which the artist likes to reflect with a healthy dose of irony, without stylizing his work in any way.

When the Basel daily newspaper TagesWoche compares his legendary photo leporello “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” with Google Street View, because Ruscha also only drove along the Sunset Strip with a camera on the back of his pickup truck and took photos of the buildings, he just smiles and replies simply: “It's the same” .

However, Ruscha strictly limits his photo project to the facades (while today's high-performance Street View cameras, with their close-range shots, can certainly violate privacy by depicting the resident picking their nose), and it is only the facades that interest him; Ruscha once said about his hometown of Los Angeles:

It's all a facade here. That's what interests me about this city in the first place, its facade-like nature.” 

In the USA, self-promotion is considered an art , but to achieve widespread popularity, it may need to be more strongly coupled with an attitude of faith or mission than in Europe, and perhaps Ruscha parodied the compulsion to self-promote a little too harshly to truly become everyone's darling.

Those with a keen sense of subtle critique will enjoy Ruscha's attacks on the inflated egos of some self-promoters, such as his 1968 "Business Card," "In God We Trust" (inscribed on the first coin in 1864 during the American Civil War, and the official motto of the USA since 1956), specifically in its monetary form on American coins: The title of the picture provides the crucial clue, but the memory of any imaginative American will automatically form the words familiar from every penny coin from the four bars of varying widths within the suggested circle…

Just a circle with white spots? No, for imaginative viewers it's an incredibly quirky image that, in an incredibly swift and unparalleled economic artistic gesture, presents money and politics, but also religion and history, for thoughtful consideration!

Ruscha's exhibitions often feel like a kind of treasure hunt for intellectuals – the more you engage with them, the more allusions emerge in the visual text. Ed Ruscha has been delighting agile minds with such clever little puzzles about things we think we know for so long that he has served as a source of inspiration for an entire generation of conceptual artists and included in Time magazine's 2013 list of the world's most influential artists, alongside 16 others .

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

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

www.kunstplaza.de