Ed Ruscha

Born in 1937 in Omaha (Nebraska), and living since 1956 in Los Angeles, the city with which his name is often associated, Ed Ruscha is the author of a body of work that now covers over five decades: one of the most significant in contemporary art. A prolific artist, he was and still is a painter, draughtsman, graphic artist, engraver, photographer, film-maker and, as from 1963 (the year the new legendary Twentysix Gasoline Stations appeared) the inventor of a genre of publication that radically transformed the concept of the art book. This international seminar, the first dedicated to Ruscha in France, pays tribute to a unique figure whose influence on today's visual culture is more discernible than ever. It brings together specialists and friends of the artist, who look back on the multiple facets of his work and put forward new interpretations and paths for investigation.

From his early days, Ed Ruscha almost constantly made words – their observation and representation – central to his work. In an often ironic or humoristic tone, language with him joins forces with the landscape, each finally being only a variant of the other, as the famous "Hollywood" sign on the Californian hillside reminds the world. In his childlike fascination with cartoons, the very word (cartooning) drew Ruscha's eye more than the thing itself, so to speak. ("Every time I saw it, I became excited. I knew that I wanted to become a cartoonist, if not an artist. Oddly enough, the word itself kept me going."). In 1980, to the question "What makes you see words as images?" Ed Ruscha replied by emphasising the driving force of language in his work as a painter: "I guess I am a child of communications, and I have always felt attracted by everything to do with that phenomenon of people speaking to each other. Maybe that itself becomes synonymous with popular culture in that newspapers, magazines – printing, specifically – have had the most dramatic effect on me. Printing was it, to me. When I first became attracted to the idea of being an artist, painting was the last method. It was almost an obsolete, archaic, form of communication. I found painting to be the least interesting of all those forms of communication. I felt newspapers, magazines, books – words – to be more meaningful than what some damn oil painter was doing. So I suppose it developed itself from that – into the idea of questioning the printed word. Then in questioning, I began to see the printed word, and it took off from there."