West Coast Art Bro

I have to admit that Ed Ruscha's back story--he once dated Diane Keaton!--delivered me to THEN NOW more than any particular interest in his first retrospective at MoMA.  Seeing his work here and there over the years hadn't made much of an impression and I never could figure out how to pronounce his name, a problem now solved by his explicit instruction in a display case.  It's ROO SHAY although I can't remember if the accent is on the first syllable or the second.

"Actual Size" by Ed Ruscha (1962) 

But I quickly warmed up to his early, graphic work filled with blue California sky. 

"Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half" (1964)

It certainly offered an enticing (and meta) selfie back-drop.  Those were the days.

"Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights" (partial, 1962)

I hadn't known Ruscha was a photographer (we both took the same shot in Rothenberg, six decades apart), but his obsessive documentation of Los Angeles suggested that we had something in common as young men who had left dusty towns--Oklahoma City, in his case--for life on opposite coasts.  New York's much older, down and dirty architecture in the 70s had bewitched me, too.

Normandie (1965)

Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) demonstrates yet again how much artistic creation requires the courage of your convictions.  Ruscha's belief that he was making art made it so. Overtime, he shot 750,000 images on the streets of Los Angeles, many from a flat bed truck customized for that purpose.  The Getty has digitized his negatives creating an exhaustive visual archive of a city as it aged from the 20th century to the 21st. 

 

Psychologists say that people love nothing more than the sound of their own name spoken by someone else.  Maybe that's why I mistook this for mine.  

"Self" (1967)

I must admit I was intrigued by the "Chocolate Room," which Ruscha debuted in 1970.  Please don't eat the art.

Every career has its ups and downs.  His painting becomes less interesting as the concept loses its freshness, perhaps even to himself.  Another artist painted this background; he added the text from High-Rise, a dystopian novel by J.G. Ballard.

"The Music from the Balconies" (1984)

Ruscha appears to be shooting for something different in this atypical work.  It eschews words for numbers and hearkens back to his midwestern lineage:  the inevitability of harvests.

"Clock" (1994)

One gallery exhibited mostly black and white works.

This sophomoric, politically incorrect palindrome has become even more of a flash point since its creation two decades ago.

"Tulsa Slut" (2002)

Ruscha, now 85, continues to work, occasionally without his usual subtlety.  

"Our Flag" (2017)

THEN NOW didn't draw crowds as large as those in other galleries on the free night sponsored by Uniqlo.

Twilight turned out to be the perfect time for my first exploration of the sculpture garden since the museum's redesign.

"Group of Figures" by Katharina Fritsch (2006-2008)

How do diners at the Modern feel about getting a rear view?

 

"She Goat" by Pablo Picasso (1952)

"Snowman" by Peter Fischli (2016)

"Back I-IV" by Henri Matisse (1908-09)

"Mama Ray" by Wangechi Mutu (partial, 2020)

"The River" by Aristide Maillol (1948)