The artist Ed Ruscha and his trail in the world

Ed Ruscha's artistic triumphal march

Now the artist's success was no longer stopped, the art scene all over the world eagerly took up other artist photo books and, above all, its very characteristic pop art works.

The pop art ed Ruschas is picturesque and graphic at the same time, through the continuous integration of writing with a high recognition value and, with its aesthetic and clear, almost hypothermic style, also something the prophet of an coming time.

Ruscha took part in the Biennale in Sao Paulo and the Biennale in Paris , 1970 at the Venice Biennale . 1972, 1977, 1982 and 1992 he was invited to the documenta in Kassel, in 2005 he was seen again at the Venice Biennale. With their years, these presences alone on large and famous art showers show very impressively how Rusha's great success runs through almost completely in the present day.

Ed Ruscha - international exhibition presences

Ed Ruscha can look back on a remarkable exhibition history with over 300 exhibitions that were located at exhibition locations across the world. His works of art can be seen in over 60 art collections , of course in the collection of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and in the collection of Ace Gallery and the County Museum of Art of Los Angeles.

But also in many other places where art is estimated: Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, Hara Museum and National Museum of Western Art Tokyo, Harvard University Art Museum Cambridge, Migros Museum Zurich, Museu Berardo Lisbon, Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt, Museum in Progress Vienna, National Gallery Washington, Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane, type Gallery Vancouver and in the Museums of Contemporary Art of Chicago and Los Angeles, Roskilde, Zagreb and Sydney - not all exhibition locations were mentioned, but we have probably already moved around the world.

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

In the same year (2004), two Ruscha exhibitions took place next to each other in the Whitney Museum of American Art New York, and in 2006 an exhibition was opened in Paris, which is particularly devoted to Rusch's photographic work and passes through further places. Just like the detailed retrospective that Ed Ruscha recently brought close to the German audience: "  Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting" started in London in 2009, then moved to the Munich House of Art and from there to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

The exhibition "Double Americanisms" by Ed Ruscha in the main hall of the Secession in 2018/2019 presented a fascinating selection of a total of 57 current works. These included innovative digital prints, a diverse series of painted language images as well as artistically designed book objects and artist books that were exhibited in showcases.

What does a "Ruscha" cost?

Well, at the November auction for contemporary art of Sotheby's New York in 2012, Ruscha's work was considered a flop: While the entire auction with many world-class offers from the field of abstract expressionism and pop art with a turnover of just over $ 375 million, Ed Ruschas was "Ship Talk"  mysterious 1988 with a false bid of 850,000 dollars to the return.

Before that, however, in February 2012 at Christie's in London, almost £ 770,000 (almost $ 1,175,000 or just under 900,000 euros), only so that you know where the prices are about if you want to ask in a galleries represented in the artist.

In this case, you have a good selection of galleries that you contact us uses, in addition to the German galleries Artax in Düsseldorf , the Jürgen Becker Gallery 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 so today.

If you didn't want to put on as much, you could z. B. satisfied with a color serigraphy of Ed Ruschas, one of five tests of the work "It's in the Stars." From 1978, € 3,125 was sold in 2012. An issue of the famous photo-learllum "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" (created in 1966) is already available for just over € 1,500, and a leaf-sized lithographs called "Insect Slant" from 1973 is available for less than € 1,500, but with a small spot.

Reception and appreciation of Ed Ruschas

Ruscha is viewed as creator of pioneering works by the majority of art viewers who judge the influence and talent in the art world and classified the most important representatives of the POP Art. Ruscha, which is also known as a conceptual artist, is continuously honored with retrospectives, in 2012 he curated an exhibition for the first time in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

Ruscha's art scene has definitely shaped Ruscha, he lives and now works there for over half a century. Ruscha has received the proximity to the film industry at least locally, because his studio is in Culver City, in Ruscha's youth alongside Hollywood one of the leading center of the film, which in the meantime escaped through the settlement of the film studio of "Columbia Pictures" , today as Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. largest US film company, a so-called "major".

In this studio, however, there are no more comic drawings, but rather unique paintings and rather ironic word paintings. Ed Ruscha sits "in the middle of the film world" and has yet kept the look of a silent, neutral to mocking observer, which in his "letters pictures" likes to emphasize the banality, which he tracks down in the big city rites and the works of the mass media.

Ruscha has never swam with or on the mainstream, he is fascinated by books and writing and has probably now designed 16 artist books and always referred to them in his work because reading is so important for him. Critics who want to produce contexts, Ruscha emphasized as the precise chronicler of a time when life absorbs more and more and in which the individual is flooded with more and more images every day. But even as a frequently revered idol of young artists, the unadjusted artist will surely continue to work into the present day.

On the most worldly “ranking of art” , namely the list of artfacts.Net Ltd., which is based on artistic success, Ed Ruscha is in place # 9 or 10, whoever has to be interested or interested in social reasons, is happy to have a “Ruscha” at home, only those who hang on Barack Obama came there for another reason (right below).

Ruscha's pictures hang in most of the big museums in the world, his photo books have become legends, all in all, Ed Ruscha can really be described as the "world star of art" .

Ed Ruscha in American society

For the society in which he lives, Ruscha shows a variety of commitment in addition to his art, since 2004 he has been z. B. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The American Academy of Arts and Sciences deals with the promotion of education and research and with projects that are intended to serve the well -being and peaceful coexistence of the various population groups within the United States.

He is also a member of the "Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence" , the Brady campaign to prevent weapons and campaigned in "Obama for America" for the election of the first black president, which is why Obama also has a "real Ruscha" at home.

The artist Ed Ruscha, art and life

Ed Ruscha gives the impression that he loves what he is doing, but does not take himself and his art unhealthy. Therefore, his artistic triumphal march was not a very louder, so Ed Ruscha did not constantly make headlines in the media. He was mostly in the second row of international attention, and quite a few art lovers are surprised when they deal with Ed Ruscha and find out what a huge work of Ruscha produced in half a century as a painter and draftsman.

His letter art is often provocative, almost always quite smart, sometimes brooding, sometimes provocative, sometimes visionary. His characters become metaphors of a fast-moving and superficial world, which the artist likes to do with a good dose of irony against mirrors t, without stylizing his work in any way.

If the Basel day week compares its legendary photo lepore "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" with Google Street View, because Ruscha was only crazy with a camera on the loading area of ​​his pickup and took photos of the buildings, he only smiles and answers: "It's the seed" .

However, Ruscha is strictly limited himself to the facades in his photo project (while today's high -performance cameras from Street View with their recordings from a short distance, privacy is already violating when they represent the house resident while nose drilling), and the facades are only who interested him, Ruscha once said about his hometown Los Angel:

It's all facade here. That is what interests me in this city at all, their facade. " 

In the United States, self -marketing is part of art , but may have to be coupled more to achieve general popularity among the population than in Europe with an attitude of faith, a mission, and maybe Ruscha parodies the compulsion to self -marketing a little too hard in order to really become a favorite of everyone.

Anyone who has a fine sense of subtle criticism enjoys Ruscha's attacks on the great ego of some self-sellers, such as his artist book "Business Card" from 1968, a fairly large and fairly funny self-prize including phonetic lessons. also takes a national symbol on the first the American Civil War, in the American Civil War, in the first coin, who has been the statutory official moth of the United States since 1956), and in its monetary expression on American coins: The title of the picture gives the crucial indication, but the memory of every imaginative American forms from the four different beams in the indicated circular line indicated by each other the words known from each Penny coin ...

Just a circle with white spots? No, for imaginative viewers an incredibly weird picture that makes money and politics, but also religion and history in an incredible quick and unmatched economic artistic gesture for thoughtful consideration!

Ruscha's exhibitions often look like a kind of scavenger hunt for intellectuals - the more you get involved, the more allusions appear in the picture writings. With such smart little puzzles about things that we believe to know , Ed Ruscha has been spoiling the movable spirits for so long that he has served as an idea provider to an entire generation of concept artists and that he included in the list of the most influential artists in the world in 2013 in Time Magazine .

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.

www. kunstplaza .de/