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Last weekend: Ruscha show exits SVMA

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Sonoma Valley Sun
He became, wrote Mark Rozzo in Vanity Fair, “to highways, service stations, and signage what Warhol was to soup cans.”

Sonoma Valley Museum of Art’s Ed Ruscha: Travel Log, an exhibition of books, prints and photographs by the world-renowned American artist, closes May 30.

The show features rarely-seen black and white photographs from Ruscha’s frequent trips between Los Angeles and Oklahoma in the 1960s, Route-66 Americana imagery.

After art school, his early paintings attracted notice as part of the Pop art movement of the 1960s; his work also has antecedents in Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, and would be central to Conceptual art.

Ruscha first traveled in 1956 to L.A. from his hometown of Oklahoma City. The then-modern elements of early highway culture were a fascination. He became, wrote Mark Rozzo in Vanity Fair, “to highways, service stations, and signage what Warhol was to soup cans.” Or, what David Hockney, another transplant beguiled by Los Angeles, was to So-Cal sun and swimming pools.

He went on to work in all artistic mediums — paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, and films, and is in the collections of major national and international museums. Ruscha still lives and works in L.A.

The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art is located at 551 Broadway. Museum hours through Sunday, noon- 4 p.m.

 




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