Ed Ruscha: Books and Paintings

The combination of pictorial motifs and words or sentences has long been a special feature of Ed Ruscha’s (born 1937) paintings. As he himself commented in an interview in 1989: Words are pattern-like, and in their horizontality they answer my investigation into landscape … they are almost not words–they are objects that become words. This attraction to combinations of word and image has naturally disposed Ruscha toward the book as an art form, and as both an object and subject in his paintings. This volume commemorates a bequest of paintings, photographs and books by Ruscha to the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, complementing their existing works. It offers a representative selection of books published by Ruscha, ranging from the legendary Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962) to On the Road (2009)–a new edition, designed and illustrated by Ruscha, of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel.