Ed Ruscha
dal 13/10/2009 al 9/1/2010
Segnalato da
13/10/2009
Ed Ruscha
Southbank Centre, London
The first major UK retrospective to focus exclusively on the paintings of one of the most influential and pioneering American artists of the past half-century. Spanning Ed Ruscha's entire career, the exhibition features 78 paintings, many on public display for the first time, and reveals the depth and breadth of artist's achievement as a painter whose interests in printed matter, graphic design, cinema, photography and the cultural landscape of the American West make his elegant and provocative work both playful and subversive.
The first major UK retrospective to focus exclusively on the paintings of one of the most influential and pioneering American artists of the past half-century. Spanning Ed Ruscha’s entire career, the exhibition features 78 paintings, many on public display for the first time, and reveals the depth and breadth of Ruscha’s achievement as a painter whose interests in printed matter, graphic design, cinema, photography and the cultural landscape of the American West make his elegant and provocative work both playful and subversive.
Born in 1937 in America’s Midwest, Ed Ruscha grew up in Oklahoma City. In 1956, aged 18, he set out for California, driving 1,500 miles west on the legendary Route 66. Arriving in Los Angeles, he enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute, a Disney-sponsored art school where he studied fine art alongside typesetting and graphic design. At that time, abstract expressionism held sway in the classroom. Finding that this spontaneous, gestural approach left no room for his own ideas, Ruscha began to make paintings that were premeditated and planned, in which text and imagery from everyday life converged. By the early 1960s, he was perceived to have to have created a new form of visual landscape combining typography with commonplace objects.
Over the past half-century, Ruscha’s art has evolved in unpredictable ways. At the same time, the things that first fired his imagination – cinema and film; driving, roadside signs, and the flat, featureless landscapes of the American West; the city, filled with constant visual noise; the phenomenon of human communication and the pleasures of typography – remain the basis for his art.
Ed Ruscha has been based in Los Angeles for all his working life, but he is no stranger to London or to the Hayward Gallery. He visited the city for the first time in 1961 and first exhibited at the Hayward in 1969, the year after the gallery opened, in the large survey exhibition Pop Art. In 1971 he was included in the Hayward exhibition 11 Los Angeles Artists. Four years later, the Arts Council Touring Exhibitions (forerunner of Hayward Gallery Touring) toured Edward Ruscha: Prints and Publications 1962-74 to 12 UK galleries. In 2004 he was elected an Honorary Academician of London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
Related events
Hayward Gallery
Members' Evening at Ed Ruscha
Thursday 5 November 2009
Visit Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting away from the crowds and enjoy a talk about the exhibition.
Admission Free
The Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Painting Weekend
Saturday 7 November 2009 - Sunday 8 November 2009
To celebrate Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting Southbank Centre invites you to explore the versatile medium of paint.
Admission Free
Blue Room, Spirit Level
Ruscha's Ruins
Friday 20 November 2009
Art historian Briony Fer talks about Ruscha's unique sense of temporality, his interest in decay and the ways they manifest themselves in his work.
£6
Purcell Room
Visualizing Words
Friday 27 November 2009
Taking the coalescence of image and text in Ruscha’s paintings as the point of departure, this discussion explores strategies of visualizing words.
£8
Purcell Room
Premium, Miracle
Thursday 10 December 2009
In the 1970s, Ruscha made two intriguing 16mm films: Premium (1971; 24 mins) and Miracle (1975; 28 mins).
£5
Southbank Centre
L.A.Xchange
Friday 11 December 2009
Witness the results of a transatlantic collaboration between groups of young people in London and Los Angeles as their newly created work is projected large-scale onto the Hayward Gallery side of Royal Festival Hall.
Image: Standard Station, 1966. Private collection © Ed Ruscha 2009. Photo: Paul Ruscha.
Press contact
Patricia O'Connor
Head of Press
Phone: +44 (0)20 79210632 Email: patricia.oconnor@southbankcentre.co.uk
Magda Pérez Uslé
PA Communications
Phone: +44 (0)20 79210985 Email: magda.perezusle@southbankcentre.co.uk
Miles Evans
Press Relations Manager, Contemporary
Phone: +44 (0)20 79210676 Email: miles.evans@southbankcentre.co.uk
Members' Evening 5 November 2009, 6:30pm
Southbank Centre - Hayward Gallery
Belvedere Road (The Hayward) London
Open 10am - 6pm (daily)
Late night Fridays until 10pm
The gallery will be closed 24 - 26 December 2009 and 1 January 2010
Full Price £10 (Supporting ticket £11.)
Seniors 60+ £8 (Supporting ticket £9.)
Concessions £6 (Supporting ticket £7.)
Students £6 (Supporting ticket £7)
Young people 12 - 18 £4.50 (Supporting ticket £5.50*)
Under 12 (out of school hours) Free
Southbank Centre Members Free