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Lot Essay
In the past decade, the historical significance of Ed Ruscha's practice has become resoundingly apparent. A charter member of both Conceptual art and west coast Pop, his work bridges the gap between the two seemingly antithetical styles; his ongoing experimentation with the written word confirms its interest and power as a subject for visual art; and his artist's books are widely acknowledged as a seminal development in the history of the medium. In 1956, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles to attend Chouinard Art Institute, but the young artist drove back to Oklahoma several times each year to visit his family. In the early 1960s, he recalls, "I had this idea for a book title-Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations-and it became like a fantasy rule in my mind that I knew I had to follow. Then it was just a matter of being a good little art soldier and going out and finishing it" (quoted in Patricia Failing, "Ed Ruscha, Young Artist: Dead Serious About Being Nonsensical," ARTNews, April 1982, p. 77). Ruscha took sixty or seventy snapshots of the filling stations on one of his trips, then selected twenty-six of them for publication as Twentysix Gasoline Stations, which charts a 1,400-mile buttonhole journey from Los Angeles through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.
It is hard to underestimate the art historical import of this modest, offset-printed, black-and-white, self-published book of dispassionate photographs of gasoline stations. In next several decades artist's books would be produced in scores, evaluated in exhibitions and essays, organized in institutional collections, and made available through distribution agencies. Ruscha himself would base one of his majestic Pop paintings on an image in the volume, and go on to publish fifteen artist's books between 1963 and 1978, mostly similar collections documenting the swimming pools, parking lots, and apartment buildings of his adopted hometown of Los Angeles.
Perhaps most significant about Ruscha's first book, however, were its photographic innovations, principally his use of straightforward, deadpan, artless, seemingly off-the-cuff snapshots that dispensed with a concern for pictorial structure or compelling subject matter. He inaugurated that dimension of photo-Conceptualism that definitively broke with the pictorialist, high-art aspirations of modernist photography and challenged the categories of style, visuality, and technique upon which it depended. Ruscha saved his negatives, and in the late 1980s began reprinting and releasing images from some of his books. These photographs look as remarkable today as they did four decades ago.
It is hard to underestimate the art historical import of this modest, offset-printed, black-and-white, self-published book of dispassionate photographs of gasoline stations. In next several decades artist's books would be produced in scores, evaluated in exhibitions and essays, organized in institutional collections, and made available through distribution agencies. Ruscha himself would base one of his majestic Pop paintings on an image in the volume, and go on to publish fifteen artist's books between 1963 and 1978, mostly similar collections documenting the swimming pools, parking lots, and apartment buildings of his adopted hometown of Los Angeles.
Perhaps most significant about Ruscha's first book, however, were its photographic innovations, principally his use of straightforward, deadpan, artless, seemingly off-the-cuff snapshots that dispensed with a concern for pictorial structure or compelling subject matter. He inaugurated that dimension of photo-Conceptualism that definitively broke with the pictorialist, high-art aspirations of modernist photography and challenged the categories of style, visuality, and technique upon which it depended. Ruscha saved his negatives, and in the late 1980s began reprinting and releasing images from some of his books. These photographs look as remarkable today as they did four decades ago.