ruscha (about) words

8/14/2019 Ruscha (About) WORDS

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ruscha-about-words 1/5

Somefoundwordsand variationson that. Words,photographsand subject-matter in Ruscha'sphotobooks.

Ed Ruscha was born in Oklahoma in 1937. He studied in the Chouinard Art Institute, after being refusedadmission to the Art Center School, the best commercial school at the time in Los Angeles. In Chouinard he took studioclasses -which insisted on Abstract Expressionism, as well as photography and graphic design courses on commercialart, which had been his initial inclination. He worked as an assistant to a printer and in an advertising agency.

His first influences were Jasper Johns and Duchamp. The use of non artistic objects that both of them appealedto him. Also, Duchamp's emphasis on ideas,his manipulation of the language and deadpan humour. He began shootingpictures when he was at school, because he liked the immediacy of photography, which could capture reality in an instant,and put it back to painting.

"The first book came out of a play with words. The title came before I even thought about the pictures. I like theword 'gasoline' and I like the specific quantity of 'twentysix'. " 1

WORDS/PHOTOGRAPHS

Twentysix Gasoline Stations is Ruscha’s first photobook. Published in 1963, it collects 26 photographs of

gasoline stations along Route 66, on the way from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. The pictures are black and white, placed inthe right page of the book, with captions in the left pages. The cover is white, with title in red typography, also designed byRuscha.

There is not a linear narrative in the book. The pictures do not show a trajectory from point 1 to point 2, but wereselected because of composition reasons. The order in which they are placed in the book is neither showing the real trip,but was chosen because of coherence between pictures. Each picture was shot once, with very few exceptions, andsome of the pictures were afterwards cropped.

The photographs are of amateurish quality, imperfect resolution and snapshot size, showing broad bands ofempty road and sky. Ruscha’s intention was to shoot them in the most neutral manner. “Actually what I was after was a

non-style or a non-statement with a no-style” 2. There are no contextual details, the importance is given to the subject, thepictures look quick, casual and unprofessional. The gas stations were shot from the distance, so that they fitted in the lensof the camera. This also enhanced the aspect of photo reportage. Ruscha regarded the camera as an instrument withwhich obtain the closest representation of reality. For him, shooting a photograph should be quick, matter of a moment,

just to capture then and there, as if he was stealing something from reality 3. Photograph was only a medium to getsomething, not a end itself. The final aim was to get information to use in a drawing, or to create an object –the books.

The pictures were taken with the sunlight in the back or the side of the stations, emphasizing their features, all inthe same manner. All the stations share components: garage, store, gas tanks, overhang and trade logo. The picturesremark similarities and differences between them: they show the patterns of architecture. Ruscha was interested in howthe function of the building would lead to a specific element, for example the overhangs. This interests makes us think of

others recordings of industrial buildings, such as those of Bern and Hilla Becher, in Germany in 1959, who categorizedthem in typologies (silos, water towers, etc) 4. However, the intention of Ruscha had nothing to do with theirs, as I willexplain. Ruscha used to work in a preplanned way. The origin of the work was a word, that could come to him when he

1 Coplands,J. “Concerning various small fires: Ed Ruscha Discusses His Perplexing Publications”, in Ruscha, E. Leave Any Information At The Signal ,ed. Schwarz, A, p.23. Originally published in Artforum , v.5, February 1965, p. 24-25.2 Barendse, H. M. “Ed Ruscha: An Inteview”, in Schwartz, A. Leave Any Information At The Signal , p. 217. Originally published in Afterimage , v. 8, n.7,February 1981, p. 8-10.3 Rowell , M. Cotton Puffs, Q-tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha , p. 24. Originally published in the Los Angeles Times , August 30,2003, p. E48.4 Rowell , M. Ed Ruscha, Photographer . p. 18. Published in Schwartz, A. Leave Any Information At The Signal , p.19.



heard it, printed or even in a dream. Repeating it to himself made it important, and it became the title of the work.Afterwards, he went out to collect the subject matter.

So what Ruscha did with his sequences of photographs was not a catalogue of examples of a functionalistarchitecture. He was representing the word-subject matter. Photographs were a mean to explore it. "What I'm interested inis in illustrating ideas." 5

As Sylvia Wolf recalls in Ed Ruscha and Photography , the integration of language into art was characteristic ofmany artists of the moment. For them, a word, an image and the object were similar. Ruscha considered his photographsas readymades, not as objects of art, but as information, linguistics. It was not until long time after that Ruscha began tolook at them as art.

Kevin Hatch explains the importance of words in Ruscha’s work, using Rosalind Krauss and Roland Barthesideas about the relation between photograph and readymade. Krauss had spoken of the readymade as a transposition ofan object from the continuum of reality into art, by a moment of selection. This crucial moment of (premeditate) selectionis similar to taking a snapshot. A photograph is, Barthes says, “a message without a code”. So the captions were needed,as art had evolved to a "quasi-tautological relation of signifier and signi ed". In much advanced art of the 1970s, a verbal

supplement recoded as art an otherwise uncoded, indexical mark. 6

However, Hatch disagrees with the fact that captions work in this way in Ruscha's books -which actually werepublished one decade before Conceptualist art.

At first, Ruscha’s captions appear to work as literally redundant, as a tautology. But, Hatch claims, captionsactually increase that distance in unexpected ways. Where this is easier to be seen is in Some Los Angeles Apartments Ruscha's third book from 1965. The book collects images of modernist apartment buildings in Los Angeles. The picturesare accompanied by a straightforward caption, but text and photograph mismatch, something that is visible when there issignage in the image. In addition, Hatch remarks the oddity of the buildings photographs, and also the strange angles andvariations in the page layout, which put the book far from the documentary project it seemed to be.

Ruscha did not want to create a taxonomic repertory, just to represent the initial idea that took the form of aword. "...I like facts, facts, facts are in this books. The closest representation to an apartment house in Some Los AngelesApartments is a photograph, nothing else, not a drawing, because that becomes somebody else's vision of what it is, andthis is the camera's eye, the closest delineation of that subject." 7

Hatch has said that "Ruscha has insisted on the unprepared nature of the subject matter of his photobooks.Ruscha’s books play with the contingent, with the chaos and infinity of possible moments, but they also acknowledge theinescapable relationship between contingency and pattern." Making a parody of the 'decisive moment', Ruscha shows usstandard moments, without making distinction between any of them. This leads to the emphasis on the elements that donot fit within the common characteristic of those ordinary moments. In Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, from 1967,Ruscha showed us a series of aerial views of deserted parking lots. The pictures were made from a plane, by a

photographer that Ruscha hired. On the asphalt of the lots appear unexpected markings, coming of oil droppings from thecars. However the book seem to show different geometric arrangements of the same typology, Ruscha claims that “t hosepatterns and their abstract design quality mean nothing to me. I’ll tell you what is more interesting: the oil droppings on theground.”

Hatch establish a relation between these pictures and Aaron Siskind’s pictures of detritus and Brassaï’s foundgraffiti. But he remarks that in each of those examples, the photographer, selects and isolates the images that are shot.

5 Fox, C. “Ed Ruscha discusses His Latest Work with Christopher Fox”, in Schwartz, A. Leave Any Information At The Signal , p.31. Originally publishedin Studio International , June 1970, p. 281-287.6 Hatch, K. “Something Else”: Ed Ruscha’s Photographic Books, October 111, Winter 2005, p. 117.7 Coleman, A. D. “My Books End Up in the Trash”, in Schwartz, A. Leave Any Information At The Signal , p.49. Originally published in the New YorkTimes , August 21, 1972, p. D12.



By contrast, Ruscha had released the decision of the snapshot to a hired photographer, and "the occasions of aestheticinterest are generated by the systematic nature of the project." Again, this proves the non-existence of the 'decisivemoment'. 8

HOLLYWOOD/CALIFORNIA COMMONPLACE

The seriality of Twentysix Gasoline Stations and the other books could make us feel as watching at a road-movie. Ruscha himself saw some of the pictures themselves as cinematic, because of the implemented perspective. Theyreminded him to the trains approaching in the movies he watched in his childhood 9. Kevin Hatch remarks that movementshould take place offstage, beyonds camera's reach, and that however, cinematic movement is the sequence of snapshotset in motion, it is frustrated by the non narrative sequence of the pictures, as well as the sheer stillness of each of them. 10

The pictures were made during a road trip, and their subject matter is an icon of car-culture. The car was afundamental tool in the execution of the work, and also it is implicit in each of the photographs, however the book is notabout the trip, it is about what the title is telling us, its subject matter is the gas stations.

This cinematic condition is more obvious in his fourth book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). For thispublication, Ruscha used a 35mm camera on a car, and shot a continuous strip of black and white motion picture film. Hedesigned the book as a accordion foldout, what involved him in a long work of cutting and pasting the photographstogether. Closed, the book is similar to the others, open, we can see a continuous image of the façades on Sunset Strip,as if we were driving through it.

Every Building on the Sunset Strip can be regarded as a movie in still images, as Wolf affirms. 11 Ruscha talks ofmovies, and particularly of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath , as a influence for him, especially for the use of black andwhite photography.

Ruscha was very influenced by the proximity of Hollywood and by California landscapes. As Margit Rowellmentions in Ed Ruscha, Photographer another connection between Los Angeles car-culture and Ruscha can be seen inhis strong interest in billboards. Billboards are giant graphic representation of words. They appeared frequently in his

paintings and photographs, apart from that Ruscha oeuvre is characterised by the representation of words. 12

The billboards of the stations are one of the elements that each picture in Twenty six Gasoline Stations have incommon. They also appear in the buildings of Sunset Strip, and in some of his other books, as in Some Los AngelesApartments and Real Estate Opportunities . His predilection for signs can be seen here and in some of other photographs.

Billboards intentions is to emphasize words and make clear the message. As Margit Powell says, it is probablethat Ruscha's was influenced by their "condensed expression and deadpan humour", especially after the 1970s. Ruschahad always been deeply interested in typography, as it is evident by his paintings -and the photobooks' covers.

Also vernacular subjects, the iconography of the West Coast fascinated Ruscha. California landscapes were themain motif in the photobooks: gas stations, apartment buildings, parking lots, pools, palm trees... Popular culture was avery popular source material in the 1960s in the United States. But for Ruscha introducing photography directly in hispaintings, as Warhol did, was out of the question. As I mentioned earlier, photography was a medium, a medium to seefast.

8 Hatch, K. “Something Else”: Ed Ruscha’s Photographic Books, October 111, Winter 2005, p. 116-117.9 Cited in Rowell, M. Ed Ruscha, Photographer . p. 18.10 Hatch, K. “Something Else”: Ed Ruscha’s Photographic Books, October 111, Winter 2005, pp. 11211 Wolf, S. Ed Ruscha and Photography , p.140.12 Rowell , M. Cotton Puffs, Q-tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha , p. 20.



Already at the very beginning of his career, in 1961 on his trip to Europe, the offhand snapshots he took showthis interest for ordinary scenes. Almost never (as almost never later on) there are people in the pictures. The subjectmatter is normally vernacular, with no context or specificity of place, He already was interested in signs (actually, beforeenrolling in Chouinard Art Institute, as I said, he wanted to be a commercial artist). Some of the pictures have sings assubjects. Others focus in architectural façades or products displays, also landscapes.

The subjects that Ruscha would choose as subject matter would be always mundane, commonplace, his interestin them is due to their lack of artistic value. When he chose them, fascination for Los Angeles landscape was decisive.

BOOKS

Ruscha’s working methods, in which the idea is the most important aspect of the work and where decisions areplanned, and also the use of serial repetition, link him to Conceptual Art. However, he still paid attention to crafts, themaking of the object of art was important to him. In addition, while Conceptual artist were interested in the artistic process,Ruscha produced objects of art –even though they were non conventional- and clearly, his books were physical objects,with specific weights, dimensions and carefully designed.

The first of his books, Twentysix Gasoline Stations was printed for 400 copies, which were to be sold for $3each, as Wolf explains. He wanted everyone to afford his books. "I want to be the Henry Ford of book making." Hethought of his books as a friendly object, which he gave in to friends. Ruscha was proud of his book, "What I really want isa professional polish, a clear-cut machine finish... I am not trying to create a precious limited edition book, but a massproduced object of high order." 13

This, the creation of cheap, mass-production objects was a subversive act at that point in time. Being a mass-production object, it was then something that could be reproduced and which photographs could be exchanged, as Hatchremarks. 14

The books invite to collective consideration, all of them with the same or similar format, carefully designed, witha title-subject matter which will be an ordinary architecture or everyday object. Title would determinate the set of

photographs inside. They are the object of art in themselves, the final aim of Ruscha's work.

Ruscha, since he was studying at Chouinard, knew clearly, that for him, to create an object of art, implied apreplanned process, broken into stages. It was not an spontaneous, expressionist act, but something with an idea behind.He will to use non conventional materials to make art, in this case, the photobooks were these non conventional objectsof art and photographs, conceived as readymades, the non conventional material. The subject matter was the word(s),dreamed, imagined, heart or read, repeated exhaustively and illustrated later.

Ed Ruscha's 16 photobooks are among of his more influential works, complex and difficult to categorize, theywere first linked to Pop, later to American photo-documentary, some associated them to Conceptual Art, they influencedPostpop and Postminimalism artists. Architects were interested because of the vernacular subject matter, professional

photographers and filmmakers were sensitive to their prosaic character and their urban landscapes. For him, they weresuccessful as a readymade: “I feel that the spirit of [Duchamp’s] work is stronger in my books than in anything else.” 15

BibliographyBois, Y.-A. "Thermometers Should Last Forever", October 111, Winter 2005, pp. 60-80.Bois, Y.-A. and Krauss, R. "A User's Guide To Entropy", October 78, Fall 1996, pp. 39-88.Hatch, K. “Something Else: Ed Ruscha’s Photographic Books", October 111, Winter 2005, pp. 107-126.

13 Cited in Wolf, S. Ed Ruscha and Photography , p.120.14 Hatch, K. “Something Else”: Ed Ruscha’s Photographic Books, October 111, Winter 2005, p. 109.15 Ruscha in Armstrong, E. "An Interview with Ed Ruscha" in Schwarz, A. Leave Any Information at the Signal, pp. 330. Originally published in“Interviews with Ed Ruscha and Bruce Conner,” October 70, Fall 1994, p. 55.

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