Riffs, revisions, knockoffs, and homages: artists pay tribute to Ed
Ruscha's famous photo-conceptual small books.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the artist Ed Ruscha created a series of small
photo-conceptual artist's books, among them Twentysix Gas Stations,
Various Small Fires, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Thirtyfour
Parking Lots, Real Estate Opportunities, and A Few Palm Trees.
Featuring mundane subjects photographed prosaically, with
idiosyncratically deadpan titles, these "small books" were sought after,
collected, and loved by Ruscha's fans and fellow artists. Over the past
thirty years, close to 100 other small books that appropriated or paid
homage to Ruscha's have appeared throughout the world. This book
collects ninety-one of these projects, showcasing the cover and sample
layouts from each along with a description of the work. It also includes
selections from Ruscha's books and an appendix listing all known Ruscha
book tributes.
These small books revisit, imitate, honor, and parody Ruscha in form,
content, and title. Some rephotograph his subjects: Thirtyfour Parking
Lots, Forty Years Later. Some offer a humorous variation: Various
Unbaked Cookies (which concludes, as did Ruscha's Various Small
Fires, with a glass of milk), Twentynine Palms (twenty-nine
photographs of palm-readers' signs). Some say something different: None
of the Buildings on Sunset Strip. Some reach for a connection with
Ruscha himself: 17 Parked Cars in Various Parking Lots Along Pacific
Coast Highway Between My House and Ed Ruscha's.
With his books, Ruscha expanded the artist's field of permissible
subjects, approaches, and methods. With VARIOUS SMALL BOOKS, various
artists pay tribute to Ed Ruscha and extend the legacy of his books.
