Artist Spotlight
At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist . . . who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Ruscha’s formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular have evolved in form and meaning as technology alters the essence of human communication.
The Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one at a time, over the course of one week. Launched in spring 2020 as a weekly platform, the series is now in its second season and is presented monthly as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each presentation features new online content, and artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Ed Ruscha features five recent works on paper by the artist. A surprise offering by the artist will be revealed on Sunday, September 20. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Kate Simon
“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.
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.”
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.
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.
Spotlight
Ruscha
Ed Ruscha’s Burning Gas Station (1965–66) was a game changer. Text by Larry Gagosian.
Ed Ruscha: On the Highline
The High Line Art Program’s Cecilia Alemani discusses Ed Ruscha’s mural.
Related News
Support
Ed Ruscha × Avant Arte
Limited-Edition Print for LACMA
Ed Ruscha has partnered with Avant Arte, an online art marketplace, to create a limited-edition print of his painting Actual Size (1962) on the occasion of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, a major retrospective of his work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A portion of proceeds from sales will benefit the museum’s future. The print will be available for purchase online at Avant Arte for forty-eight hours beginning at 1pm ET on Thursday, April 11, 2024. The edition size will be determined by the number of orders placed within the timed-release period. Each print is individually numbered and authenticated with a bespoke artist’s stamp.
Ed Ruscha, Actual Size, 2024 © Ed Ruscha
Honor
Ed Ruscha
California Hall of Fame
Ed Ruscha will be inducted into the California Hall of Fame for his service to the arts in a ceremony taking place on Tuesday, December 13, 2022, at which he will receive a medal from California Governor Gavin Newsom. Established in 2006 at the California Museum in Sacramento by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, the award honors legendary Californians who embody the state’s innovative spirit and have made their mark on history across a variety of fields, including the arts, education, business and labor, science, sports, philanthropy, and public service.
Ed Ruscha in his studio, Los Angeles, 2008. Photo: Kate Simon
In Conversation
Adam McEwen, Bob Monk, and Lisa Turvey on Ed Ruscha
Tuesday, September 22, 2020, 5pm EDT
On the occasion of Artist Spotlight: Ed Ruscha, join artist Adam McEwen, Gagosian director Bob Monk, and Lisa Turvey, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Ed Ruscha’s works on paper, for an online conversation. The trio will discuss how Ruscha has experimented with the sound, appearance, and sense of language to imbue his works on paper with humor and pathos. To join, register at zoom.us.
Ed Ruscha, CERTAIN FACTS, 2020 © Ed Ruscha. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
Museum Exhibitions
Opening this Week
Humain Autonome
Déroutes
April 26–September 22, 2024
Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne,Vitry-sur-Seine, France
www.macval.fr
This exhibition focuses on the automobile as a paradoxical object, loved by some, hated by others. Production lines, operating systems, links with fossil fuels, myths, and the unconscious are all analyzed, deconstructed, and reassessed in works by more than fifty artists from different generations. Work by Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon and Blair Thurman is included.
Taryn Simon, Finance package for the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, Baku, Azerbaijan, February 3, 2004, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015 © Taryn Simon
On View
ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN
Through October 6, 2024
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
www.lacma.org
Spanning sixty-five years of Ed Ruscha’s remarkable career and mirroring his own cross-disciplinary approach, this exhibition, which was conceived in collaboration with the artist, features over 250 works produced between 1958 and the present. Including painting, drawing, prints, film, photography, artist’s books, and installation, these are displayed according to a loose chronology. Alongside the artist’s most acclaimed works, the exhibition highlights lesser-known aspects of his practice, offering new perspectives and underlining Ruscha’s role as a keen observer of our rapidly changing world. This exhibition traveled from the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Installation view, ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, April 7–October 6, 2024. Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA
Closed
A Dark Hymn
Highlights from the Hill Collection
March 1–April 13, 2024
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
A Dark Hymn celebrates the five-year anniversary of the Hill Art Foundation by examining the collection through the lens of Valentin Bousch’s sixteenth-century stained glass window, The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise (1533), which is permanently installed in the foundation’s Chelsea building. The exhibition places work from the four major categories of the collection—Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, old master paintings, canvases and sculptures by modern masters, and contemporary art—in dialogue with the window. Work by Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, and Christopher Wool is included.
Installation view, A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, March 1–April 13, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Gober, © Caroline Kent, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Matthew Herrmann
Closed
Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog)
November 18, 2023–April 7, 2024
The Broad, Los Angeles
www.thebroad.org
Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) is drawn entirely from the Broad collection and showcases works by Los Angeles–based artists. Titled after a work by John Baldessari, the exhibition includes reflections on Los Angeles as a city in flux and turmoil, and on societal issues that extend far beyond the city. Featuring more than sixty works made from 1969 to 2023, it brings together photorealistic painting, photography, sculpture, and political signage by twenty-one artists across varying generations. Work by Mark Grotjahn, Alex Israel, Ed Ruscha, and Jonas Wood is included.
Ed Ruscha, Honey . . . . I Twisted Through More Damned Traffic to Get Here, 1984, The Broad, Los Angeles © Ed Ruscha