Automobiline: Ed Ruscha and cars

Ed Ruscha: always restless, moving, his work often looking at cars, driving, cities, maps...

1. I become more alert nearing this spot, feeling like I'm in some kind of hot zone of the city:

There exists in this city a particular spot that holds a deep interest for me at least for now. You arrive at this spot by traveling North on Sepulveda Blvd. in the left lane about 60 feet before reaching the intersection of Palms Blvd. It's a dip, or rather a scrape in the asphalt toward the right side of the lane - a dip your right tire will hit if you are correctly in the middle of the lane. It's always irritating to hit this spot while going 35 miles per hour or faster. But it's not just another dip in the road. Look at it and it begins to have its own integrity. It's flame-shaped, like a fireball or meteorite crashing to Earth on this very place on Sepulveda Boulevard. I become more alert nearing this spot, feeling like I'm in some kind of hot zone of the city. To get the best effects from this depression in the street, when possible, I drive as slow as can be done, say 5 to 8 MPH or even slower, letting my tires roll over it like a little love-nudge, kissing the inner side of my treads. For something considered a roadway disturbance, it sure has a powerful amusement for me. [picture here, pay for article at LA Times]

2. I would like to read Socrates while stuck in the traffic on the Hollywood Freeway:

Q: For a hip postmodernist based in Southern California, you do seem oddly all-American, with your Oklahoma drawl and your paintings of everyday words and phrases floating in big, open, skylike spaces.
A: I'm into the iconography of the country -- street stuff and word stuff and highways and ribbons of asphalt. Someday I would like to read Socrates while stuck in the traffic on the Hollywood Freeway.

Q: Do you see a connection between automobiles and American art?
A: Sure. Even the Abstract Expressionists were into the American dream and American imagery and, certainly, cars.

Q: Where do you see cars in Jackson Pollock's "drip" paintings?
A: You can't see it, but you can certainly feel it. You can feel speed, and you can feel the wind blowing through your hair. It's just there. There's no denying it.

[recall that Pollock dies in a car crash in 1955]

Q: It's funny the way American highways and road signs at some point replaced Picasso and Matisse as the starting points for so many serious painters.
A: The thing that really makes me want to puke is these artists who feel like they have to go to the South of France because the light is so beautiful. I find that bogus. The light in California is hotter than the light in France.

Q: Looking at your work is a little like viewing the horizon through a dusty windshield
A: I take that as a compliment. When I was a kid living in Oklahoma City, I read John Steinbeck's ''Grapes of Wrath'' and it kick-started me into going to California. Driving out to Los Angeles, the only thing missing was the mattress on the roof of the car.

3. More Ruscha:

• Standard Oil gas station paintings and prints.
• Photography: Thirty-four Parking Lots, 1967, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962 - shot from a car making the Okjlahoma to LA trip along route 66, and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 (also: Ruscha as pioneer for Amazon a9/Google local search. But not forgetting Tom Phillips' 20 Sites, N Years too).
• His metroplots: "the city reduced to street maps, a grid of names in hazy, smoggy grey-green" eg LASF series, 2003, the Los Francisco San Angeles portfolio, 2001, and Pico Hoover Alvarado, 1999.
• Ruscha books reviewed.
• Vegas: Learning from... Ruscha and Venturi Scott Brown, 1962-1977 Everyday Architecture and Urbanism of Los Angeles and Las Vegas and Learning from Las Vegas: The Book That (Still) Takes My Breath Away.
• Ruscha is on at the Venice Biennale and in the RA summer show in London. Fear before the biennale: "I guess I have no excuses now. I have to do it. I did accept the mission." Ruscha for president, says Mark Kostabi: "He's America's greatest diplomat, as an artist and a person. He should be president!". WashPo on Ruscha's show, the Course of Empire.

(via Art Blogging LA, Things magazine, others)