Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Edward Ruscha drove to Los Angeles in 1956 to become a commercial artist. A period of study at the Chouinard Art Institute, along with exposure to work by artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, convinced him to try noncommercial art instead. An apprenticeship with Plantain Press left him with "a respect for pages." Books and words are two of his abiding interests. "I'm not a great reader, either, but I love books, the physical objects of them," he told the New York Times in 2013. A visit to New York in 1961 introduced him to Pop art and he began to concentrate seriously on everyday objects in his paintings. A year later his work appeared alongside Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the first major Pop overview, New Paintings of Common Objects, at the Pasadena Art Museum. From 1963 onwards he produced numerous cheap books of black and white photographs with titles like Twentysix Gas Stations and Every Building on the Sunset Strip. He painted the Hollywood sign more than once, and worked on a series of word-paintings. His Vanishing Cream of 197 6 consisted of the words "vanishing cream" written in petroleum jelly on a black wall. During the 1970s his work was featured in more than one overview of Conceptual art. "Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach," suggests his website. His work has appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Musee National Jeu de Paume, Paris, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Deanne Sole, UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum 2013
Bibliography: Ed Ruscha website: http://www.edruscha.com Carol Vogel, Conceptual Inspiration, by the Book, New York Times
