Biographical Sketch
Edward "Ed" Joseph Ruscha IV was born December 16, 1937, in Omaha, Nebraska, to
Edward Joseph Ruscha III, an insurance auditor, and Dorothy Driscoll Ruscha. His
family, including an older sister, Shelby, and a younger brother, Paul, moved to
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1941.
Growing up in Oklahoma City, Ruscha's favorite pastimes included his paper route and
drawing cartoons. He took his first painting class in 1948 from a local portrait
painter, Richard Goetz, and among his childhood friends were Mason Williams, Joe
Goode, and Jerry McMillan, who also went on to become prominent artists. After
graduating high school in August 1956, Ruscha traveled to California with Mason
Williams to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) in Los Angeles.
When he first enrolled at Chouinard, Ruscha planned to work as a sign painter or in
advertising, and focused his studies on commercial arts, taking classes in graphic
design, advertising, and photography. Increasingly influenced by the Dadaists and
the contemporary works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Ruscha eventually
gravitated toward painting, training under Robert Irwin, Emerson Woelffer, and other
art instructors. Outside of the classroom, Ruscha apprenticed with Saul Marks at
Plantin Press where he developed an interest in book printing, layout, and
typography.
In 1960, following his graduation from Chouinard, Ruscha found employment at the Los
Angeles-based Carson/Roberts advertising agency where he worked as a layout artist.
The following year, he traveled to Europe with his mother and brother and toured
twelve countries over a six-month period. Throughout the trip, Ruscha photographed
street life with his Yashica twin-lens reflex camera and created collages out of
paper. On his way back to California after the trip, Ruscha spent time in New York
City where he met prominent art dealer Leo Castelli and was first exposed to Pop
Art. Castelli would later represent Ruscha through his gallery in New York.
Upon returning to Los Angeles, Ruscha dedicated himself to painting full-time and
moved into his first studio in the Glassell Park district. In 1962, his paintings
were included in the first museum exhibition dedicated to Pop Art, New Paintings of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps,
at the Pasadena Art Museum. The exhibition featured works by soon-to-be famous Pop
artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Joe Goode, and Wayne Thiebaud. In 1963,
Ruscha had his first solo show at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which featured some
of his early word paintings, including Smash (1963) and
OOF (1963), and the billboard-shaped Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962). That same
year, Ruscha published his first book, Twentysix Gasoline
Stations, and over the next ten years published 15 books and executed
more than 500 word images in various media, including his famous liquid word
paintings.
Starting in the late 1960s, Ruscha began to experiment with different media, using
organic substances, rather than traditional paints or inks, to create works like
Stains (1969) and News, Mews,
Pews, Brews, Stews, & Dues (1970). During this period, Ruscha
made two films, Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975). In 1972, a major survey of Ruscha's
drawings, prints, and books was exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The 1980s and 1990s brought Ruscha increasing status as an internationally-known and
respected artist. In 1980, Ruscha created a signature font, Boy Scout Utility Modern, using it almost
exclusively in his works since. His first retrospective, The
Works of Ed Ruscha, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
opened in March of 1982. That show traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in
New York and three other museums in the United States and Canada. He completed two
public art commissions, one for the Miami-Dade Public Library (1985-1989) and the
other for the Denver Public Library (1994-1995), among other commissions and design
projects.
In 2009, the Hayward Gallery in London organized a major survey of Ruscha's
paintings, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting. His
drawings, paintings, photographs, and prints are found in museums all over the
world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Los Angeles. He is represented by Gagosian Gallery.
As of 2016, Ruscha lives and works in Los Angeles with his wife Danna. He has two
children, Edward Joseph Eddie Ruscha V, born in
1968, and Sonny Bjornson, born in 1988.
Scope and Contents
Select works of artist Edward Ruscha, from 1962 to 2015, are represented by: research
material and notes; sketchbooks and drawings; mock-ups and dummies; photographic
material; audio-visual material; invoices and correspondence; publicity, reviews,
and exhibition material; print portfolios and suites; posters; and published works.
The bulk of the material focuses on Ruscha's artists' books, specifically On the Road (2009), and his commissioned works, including
his paintings for the Miami-Dade Public Library (1985-1989) and the Denver Central
Public Library (1994-1995). A smaller amount of material is available for his films,
other commissioned projects, and print portfolios and suites. The collection does
not include personal material or much material concerning his paintings or other
works on paper. The collection is divided into the following four series which are
arranged by size and/or importance: I. Works, 1962-2012; II. Studio Notebooks,
1967-1995; III. Exhibitions, 1969-2013; and IV. Career-Related, 1963-2015. The first
three series are arranged chronologically, and the final series is arranged
alphabetically. While most of the materials are in English, some are in other
languages, including French and Italian.
Series I. Works documents Ruscha's artistic activities from 1962 to 2012 and is
divided into six subseries: A. Artists' Books; B. Commissioned Works; C. Films; D.
Paintings; E. Print Portfolios and Suites; and F. Other Projects. Within each
subseries works are arranged chronologically.
Between 1963 and 2010, Ruscha published and/or collaborated on 25 books. The first
subseries, Artists' Books, includes materials that documents the creation,
publication, and post-publication processes for 20 of those books beginning with
Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) and ending with
Dirty Baby (2010). The majority of the books were
published in the 1960s and 1970s, and they include titles such as Various Small Fires (1964), Every
Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), and Stains (1969). Some projects, like On the
Road (2009), are more heavily-documented than others. Items of note
include snapshots of the gasoline stations for Twentysix
Gasoline Stations (including some not selected for the final
publication), a complete set of annotated production prints for Royal Road Test (1967), correspondence for Dutch Details (1971) highlighting the complications in
publishing the rare work (much of the print run was inadvertently destroyed), as
well as an extensive collection of research notes, photographic material, and
annotated dummies for On the Road, Ruscha's
photo-annotated version of Jack Kerouac's classic novel. In addition to material
documenting the publication process, the Ransom Center also received final published
copies of Royal Road Test, Business Cards (1968), Babycakes (1970),
Stains, Real Estate
Opportunities (1970), Dutch Details, On the Road, and Dirty Baby.
The following titles are only represented by the published work: Guacamole Airlines (1980), They
Called Her Styrene (2000), S books (2001),
ME AND THE (2002), Then
& Now: Hollywood Blvd 1973-2004 (2005), and OH/NO (2005).
The second subseries, Commissioned Works, includes material that documents the
conception, production, and post-production activities for a variety of commissions
Ruscha completed between 1968 and 2012. The bulk of the material documents the
commissioned paintings for the Miami-Dade and Denver public libraries. Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go is a set of
murals and lunettes Ruscha completed for the Miami-Dade Public Library between 1985
and 1989. Photographic material documents the complete process, beginning with the
paintings' creation in Ruscha's Los Angeles studio, their trip across the country,
and their eventual installation in Miami. Also included are contract negotiations
and correspondence with the city of Miami, and Ruscha's original proposal and
sketches for the project. Similar materials document the series of painted panels he
created for the Denver public library (Denver Central Library
Public Art Project) between 1994 and 1995. Other items of note in this
subseries include: photographs, negatives and transparencies for the billboard,
The Back of Hollywood (Hollywood Rear-View Mirror)
(1975-1977); correspondence, sketches and photographs for Words In Their Best Order (2001), a series of paintings Ruscha completed
for Gannett Company, Inc.'s building in Tysons Corner, Virginia; and a signed and
dated original ink drawing for the art magazine Point
d'ironie. The following commissions are only represented by the final
work: Billy Book, exhibition catalog (1968); Hollywood Collects, poster (1970); Life, Time Inc., poster (1978); Stay Safe,
Change Inc., poster (1978); 200 Years Old, L.A.
Bicentennial, poster (1980); Cheech and Chong,
Amsterdam Film Festival, poster (1982); Untitled,
Chicago Art Expo, poster (1983); America Needs Hart,
Hart Presidential Campaign, poster (1983); Care, World
Hunger Crusade, poster (1995); and MOCA NEW 30th Anniversary
Gala, book (2009).
Films, the third subseries, includes material that documents the conception and
production for Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975). Materials for the first film, an adaptation of Ruscha's
book Crackers (1969), include snapshots from the shoot
and handwritten scene descriptions. Similar materials document the production of
Ruscha's second film and include typewritten drafts of the story and script, as well
as Polaroids of production stills. The 16mm composite release prints for both films
were transferred to the Ransom Center's Moving Image collection. The film, The Books of Ed Ruscha (1968-69/2012), which was never
released, is represented only by a signed artists' proof of a DVD-R of the film in a
specially designed package. It was published, but never distributed, by Los Angeles
County Museum of Art in 2012. The film features Mason Williams, a friend and
collaborator of Ruscha, looking through several of Ruscha's artists' books. A
voice-over of Williams reading the text plays over the film.
The fourth subseries, Paintings, is one of the smallest subseries and consists of
test proofs on cloth used to make a reproduction of Brave Men
Run in the Family (1983) and color Polaroids documenting Woman on Fire (1990).
Ruscha created numerous works on paper, and the fifth subseries, Print Portfolios and
Suites, represents a fraction of that body of work. Present are lithographs, screen
prints, etchings, and photographic prints, created between 1970 and 2007. Depending
on the project, individual works are loose, cased, or bound as a volume. The works
represent the range of Ruscha's interests in subject and technique. Notable among
them is News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, & Dues
(1970), a portfolio of screen prints made with organic substances which include
coffee, jam, and salmon roe. One subject that Ruscha frequently returns to is that
of literature and words, as exampled by Sayings (1995),
a portfolio of ten lithographs based on Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson: A Tale (1894). Ruscha's predilection for landscapes,
both urban and natural, is evident in series like Vacant
Lots (1970/2003) and Country Cityscapes
(2001). Ruscha revisited the subjects of previous projects by creating series based
on past artists' books. The series The Sunset Strip
(1995), Pools (1997), and Parking
Lots (1999) were made from the original negatives used to create their
respective artists' books. Included are both numbered editions and signed artists'
proofs. Ruscha collaborated with a variety of printmakers and publishers, including
Patrick Painter Editions (Vancouver and Hong Kong) and Graphicstudio (University of
South Florida, Tampa). Item-level information, including title, medium and
dimensions, is available for all works in this subseries with the exception of those
in Then & Now: Hollywood Blvd, 1973-2004
(2004).
The sixth and final subseries is the smallest and is comprised of just two
photographs representing two obscure works. The first, a black and white Polaroid,
documents an early stage of Rocky II(1976/1979?), which
is an artificial rock that Ruscha constructed and placed in the Mojave Desert in the
mid-1970s. The second photograph shows Ruscha standing with a partially constructed
billboard which may have been a collaborative project with the artist Ron Cooper in
New Mexico in the 1980s (Untitled New Mexico Project, 1986). Little documentation of
either work exists.
Series II. Studio Notebooks is the smallest series and is comprised of six notebooks,
dating from 1967 to 1995 (bulk 1980s). Each notebook contains sketches, notes,
plans, ideas, quotes and observations for a variety of works. The notebook from 1967
to 1969 contains sketches and notes related to works found elsewhere within this
collection: Business Cards (1968), A Few Palm Trees (1971), and Stains (1969). There are two notebooks dedicated to Ruscha's
commissioned projects for the Miami and Denver libraries. The notebook for Miami
(Miami Project) includes sketches and notes
for the rotunda and lunettes and detailed descriptions of each panel. The Denver
notebook contains sketches related to the Denver Central
Library Public Art Project as well as other works made around that time.
A more extensive collection of material related to the Miami-Dade Public Library and
Denver Central Library projects can be found in Series I. Subseries B. For
preservation purposes, notebooks cannot be opened beyond 90 degrees. Book cradles
are provided in the Ransom Center's Reading and Viewing Room to support the
notebooks when being viewed.
The third series, Exhibitions, is arranged chronologically and consists primarily of
posters for sixty of Ruscha's solo and group exhibitions from 1969 to 2013. The
posters are from exhibitions spanning the globe, from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi,
demonstrating Ruscha's international appeal and reputation. Thirty-eight of the
posters feature works by Ruscha. All exhibition information (title, location, and
date) is included in the container list as is detailed information on the title,
medium, and dimensions for each poster. In addition to the posters, there is
material related to two exhibitions: Words Without Thoughts
Never to Heaven Go: Works Related to the Miami-Dade Public Library Commission
for Metro-Dade Art in Public Places, Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, Florida,
1985-1988, and Ed Ruscha: The End, Denver Art Museum,
1995. These materials include correspondence, invitations, exhibition checklists,
reviews, photographs, and slides.
Series IV. Career-Related is the second smallest series and is arranged
alphabetically. Included are a small amount of correspondence, samples of Ruscha's
letterhead, invoices, and photographs of Ruscha and the interior of his studio, all
of which date from 1963 to 2015. Also present is a record book containing an
inventory of Ruscha's early artists' books and a brochure related to his publication
company, Heavy Industry Publications, which produced many of them. The artists'
books recorded begin with Twentysix Gasoline Stations
(1963) and end with Hard Light (1978). Additional
materials include a copy of the film LA Suggested by the Art
of Ed Ruscha by Gary Conklin Films, 11 posters illustrated with works by
Ruscha, reviews for some of his early artists' books and paintings, and two art
magazines that feature work by Ruscha.
Notes on Arrangement and Description:
Arrangement and description of manuscripts: The collection
arrived grouped by work and project and was organized chronologically. This order
was maintained for the most part, but in some cases order was imposed for
clarification and consistency. Original folder titles were used when available.
Typically, Ruscha filed his material in folders and/or envelopes labeled with the
title of the work or project. Abbreviated titles were often used, but in order to
maintain consistency, full titles are used throughout the finding aid. The original
folders were not retained during processing, but where they bore writing other than
the expected title, photocopies of the original folder and/or envelope were added to
the folder's contents. Documents which contained personal information were replaced
with redacted copies to protect individuals' privacy. Examples of personal
information include Social Security, account, and credit card numbers. The original
documents were retained but are not available to researchers.
Preservation: During Ruscha's editing process,
self-adhesive sticky notes were frequently affixed to documents and photographs. For
preservation purposes, photographs bearing these notes were photocopied in order to
preserve the document's original layout. Depending on the nature of the note and
document, sticky notes were either removed or retained and separately housed in
protective sleeves. Other potentially harmful or damaging materials such as
paperclips, metal brads, and clasps were removed during physical processing.
Negatives, transparencies, and slides have been separated by format for preservation
storage.
Special notes for select works
Stains (1969): This work is considered by some to be a
print series, but according to the catalogue raisonné this portfolio of
mix-media stains on paper is considered a book.
On the Road (2009): Ruscha organized the photographic
material by page number. Materials not originally found with their page number were
reintegrated for consistency.
Miami-Dade Public Library project: The photographic material is divided into the two
different parts of this commission. The first part, the rotunda mural, was completed
in 1985. The second part, the lunettes, was completed in 1989. The material was for
the most part grouped in this way by Ruscha, but during processing materials which
were found together at random were reintegrated with their respective stages of the
commission. Rafael Salazar was the professional photographer of the Miami
project.
Denver Central Library project: The photographic material follows chronological order
from the creation of the panels in Ruscha's Los Angeles studio (1993-1994), to their
installation in June 1995. After installation, professional photographs were taken
by Gary Regester and Paul Ruscha. The final photographs are divided into three
different views: one showing the detail of the panels, another showing the
arrangement of the panels laid out as a bird's eye
view, and a final complete view of the panels in the library.
Arrangement by format
- Photographs, contact sheets, and manuscript material: Boxes 1-19,
47
- Oversize material: Boxes 20-40, 45-46, osf 1-13, and FF 45.1-2, 4-6
- Negatives: Box 41
- Transparencies: Boxes 41-44
Abbreviations and terms
- The term black and white to describe
photographs has been abbreviated to b&w.
- Unless otherwise noted, photographs is
used to describe photographic prints.
Index of Correspondents: All of the correspondence in the
Edward Ruscha Papers and Art Collection is listed in an Index of Correspondents at
the end of this finding aid. It includes correspondence located through Series I,
III and IV for Ed Ruscha, his studio assistants and manager (Mary Dean, Susan
Haller, Pat Poncy, and Paul Ruscha), and some correspondence between
third-parties.