Edward RuschaAmerican, 1937Cheese Mold Standard with Olive
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Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
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- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the work
Ed Ruscha is a California-based artist whose work is associated with the Pop art movement. Standard Station marks the first time that Ruscha collaborated with a print publisher, who financed the edition but left the execution up to the artist. Ruscha’s book of photographs Twenty-six Gasoline Stations—specifically the page depicting a Standard Oil station in Amarillo, Texas—provided the model for this print as well as a painting he made in 1963. Perhaps the most notable feature of the print version of the image is the gradation of the colors in the sky. Ruscha achieved this effect through the “Split-Fountain” technique, which blends ink to create a rainbow effect. The technique originated in commercial printing and had been used in lithographic and screenprinting shops for many years, but Ruscha was one of the first to use it in fine-art printing. As art historian Riva Castleman has pointed out, the garish rainbow effect achieved by Ruscha in this print was so often imitated by other artists that, by the late 1960s, it had become a printing cliché.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1974.59c
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of Edward Ruscha
The whole life1965–1969
Layout designer at Artforum as “Eddie Russia”
After college he worked as a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts advertising agency in Los Angeles, and from 1965 to 1969 as layout designer for Artforum magazine under the pseudonym “Eddie Russia”; in 1969 he was a visiting professor of printing and drawing at UCLA.
1967
Marries Danna Knego
He marries Danica “Danna” Knego, whom he met in 1965; the couple has two children, a son, Edward “Eddie”, and a daughter, Sonny.
1967–1970
Self-imposed exile from painting: gunpowder and graphite drawings
During a period of self-imposed exile from painting (1967–1970) he makes gunpowder and graphite drawings: single words in a trompe l'oeil technique, as if formed from ribbons of curling paper.
1968
First solo show in Europe, in Cologne
His first European solo show takes place in Cologne, at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner.
1970
The “Chocolate Room” at the Venice Biennale
Ruscha represents the United States at the Venice Biennale as part of a survey of American printmaking with an on-site workshop, and constructs “Chocolate Room”: 360 sheets of paper permeated with chocolate hang like shingles on the gallery walls, and the pavilion smells like a chocolate factory. In 2003 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles acquires the installation (then worth about $1.5 million).
1970
Joins the Leo Castelli Gallery
He joins the Leo Castelli Gallery; his first solo exhibition there will come only in 1973.
