Installation Views

Works Exhibited

About

Deterioration is a fertile area to explore.
—Ed Ruscha

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Ed Ruscha.

Since the 1960s, Ruscha has created a distinctive and ever-expanding lexicon of signs, symbols, images, and words drawn from vernacular America. His visual utterances, sounds, and concepts—such as the roadside gas station or the word “OOF”—have become embedded in the American ethos. He has presented recurring images—the American flag, mountains, books, and words—that are suggestive yet never didactic, and the development of these images over the course of his illustrious career exemplifies the wry refinement and subtlety with which he speaks through painting.

In these new paintings, Ruscha has chosen to revisit the flag, the mountain, and the tire. Flags entered Ruscha’s visual vocabulary between 1985 and 1987, rippling in the breeze over dramatic sunsets or triumphant blue skies, offset with subtle warning cues of black bars resembling censor strips. The motif returned in OUR FLAG (2017)—currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, which served as a polling site for the November election—where it disintegrated into shreds set against a near-black sky. The flag becomes newly distorted in RIPPLING FLAG (2020), this time abnormally widened to extend past the right-side frame, its flowing surface creating twisted shapes and shadows over the red and white stripes. In Top of Flag (2020), only a fraction of the standard is visible at the bottom of the canvas, surrounded by a gradation of shadow, almost as though the flag were a setting sun or a dimming spotlight on a stage.

Flags

Flags

Gillian Pistell writes on the loaded symbol of the American flag in the work of postwar and contemporary artists.

Donald Marron

Donald Marron

Jacoba Urist profiles the legendary collector.

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

“Things Fall Apart”: Ed Ruscha’s Swiped Words

“Things Fall Apart”: Ed Ruscha’s Swiped Words

Lisa Turvey examines the range of effects conveyed by the blurred phrases in recent drawings by the artist, detailing the ways these words in motion evoke the experience of the current moment.

Artists’ Magazines

Artists’ Magazines

Gwen Allen recounts her discovery of cutting-edge artists’ magazines from the 1960s and 1970s and explores the roots and implications of these singular publications.

Eilshemius and Me: An Interview with Ed Ruscha

Eilshemius and Me: An Interview with Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha tells Viet-Nu Nguyen and Leta Grzan how he first encountered Louis Michel Eilshemius’s paintings, which of the artist’s aesthetic innovations captured his imagination, and how his own work relates to and differs from that of this “Neglected Marvel.”

The River Café Cookbook

The River Café Cookbook

London’s River Café, a culinary mecca perched on a bend in the River Thames, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2018. To celebrate this milestone and the publication of her cookbook River Café London, cofounder Ruth Rogers sat down with Derek Blasberg to discuss the famed restaurant’s allure.

Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.

Ed Ruscha: A Long Way from Oklahoma

Ed Ruscha: A Long Way from Oklahoma

In conjunction with his exhibition VERY at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, Ed Ruscha sat down with Kasper Bech Dyg to discuss his work.

For Notre-Dame

For Notre-Dame

An exhibition at Gagosian, Paris, is raising funds to aid in the reconstruction of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris following the devastating fire of April 2019. Gagosian directors Serena Cattaneo Adorno and Jean-Olivier Després spoke to Jennifer Knox White about the generous response of artists and others, and what the restoration of this iconic structure means across the world.

Veil and Vault

Veil and Vault

An exhibition at the Broad in Los Angeles prompts James Lawrence to examine how artists give shape and meaning to the passage of time, and how the passage of time shapes our evolving accounts of art.

Course of Empire

Course of Empire

Ed Ruscha sat down with Tom McCarthy and Elizabeth Kornhauser, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to discuss the nineteenth-century artist Thomas Cole, whose Course of Empire paintings inspired a series of works by Ruscha more than a century later.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2018

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2018

The Winter 2018 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available. Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince.

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018

The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.

Ed Ruscha and Joanne Northrup

In Conversation
Ed Ruscha and Joanne Northrup

Ed Ruscha sat down with JoAnne Northrup of the Nevada Museum of Art to discuss the exhibition Unsettled, which the two co-curated.

Art and Food

Art and Food

Mary Ann Caws and Charles Stuckey discuss the presence of food and the dining table in the history of modern art.

Desire

Desire

Diana Widmaier Picasso, curator of the exhibition Desire, reflects on the history of eroticism in art.

Ruscha

Spotlight
Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s Burning Gas Station (1965–66) was a game changer. Text by Larry Gagosian.

Ed Ruscha: On the Highline

Ed Ruscha: On the Highline

The High Line Art Program’s Cecilia Alemani discusses Ed Ruscha’s mural.

Ed Ruscha: Ship Ahoy etching

Ed Ruscha: Ship Ahoy

$5,500
Ed Ruscha: At a Clip etching

Ed Ruscha: At a Clip

$5,500
Cover of the book Ed Ruscha: Tom Sawyer Paintings

Ed Ruscha: Tom Sawyer Paintings

$65
Ed Ruscha: Castiron Calendar print

Ed Ruscha: Castiron Calendar

$12,000
Cover of the catalogue raisoné Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper: Volume Three 1998–2018

Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper: Volume Three, 1998–2018

From $200
Cover of the book Ed Ruscha: An Archive of Projects

Ed Ruscha: An Archive of Projects

$125
Ed Ruscha: Science Is Truth Found Out (RED)ition Winter 2022 Scarf

Ed Ruscha: Science Is Truth Found Out (RED)ition Winter 2022 Scarf

$1,200
Cover of the book Ed Ruscha: Dedication Stones

Ed Ruscha: Dedication Stones

$50
Ed Ruscha: Mysteries lithograph

Ed Ruscha: Mysteries

$50,000