Ed Ruscha

I've been interested in art since I was about 5 or 6 years old and sat in front of the TV watching Jon Gnagy's drawing lessons. Also, I was drawn to the bright and colorful images of comic books (I learned as much about reading from them as I did from Dick and Jane). Later, in the world of fine art, the style that became Pop Art used images that were appropriated from comic books and commercial art. So, it followed that I would have had a keen interest in that style.

In particular, the work of Ed Ruscha appealed to me. The Standard Gas Station painting shown here included advertising signage and a dramatic perspective. It was the kind of image that was familiar to everyone as subject matter but in this simplified form without any surrounding buildings, it became an interesting image. He's done several versions of this painting, many of which are pictured online.



The gas station was a natural for him to use as subject matter. He's expressed his affinity for the road and traveling on highways. He was born in 1937 and grew up in Oklahoma. When he was about 20 years old, he read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and that influenced him a lot. Even before reading that book, he had hitch-hiked from Oklahoma to Florida when he was 14.

When he was in his early twenties he drove to California and settled in Los Angeles. He became a student at what would become the California Institute of the Arts. The images of Los Angeles and sourthern California became a source of material for him. Other images he's used in his painting are from the American West, where he did a lot of his traveling when he was young.

In addition to painting he was also interested in photograhy. In 1966 he put together a book of photographs called Every Building on the Sunset Strip (and that's what it was). He pre-dated Google Street View by about 40 years.

Many of his paintings incorporate a word (or words) in them. There's a kind of deadpan humor in the combination of words and images, but the meaning is ambiguous. I've included a few of these here.

Here's a short clip from a British TV show that was covering his 50 years of painting retrospective show at Hayward Gallery in London (50 years of painting!).

And here' a segment from a talk he gave at the show.

Watching Creative People at Work

How many times do many of us watch tv with no particular idea of what we'll end up watching? I'm talking about channel surfing here. But, the other night I went through some channels and found a gem. It was something I really enjoyed and it was luck I came upon it. I found The Pixar Story on CNBC. This was a 2007 documentary that was the story of the people who used the then new CGI technology to create animated movies (including Toy Story and The Incredibles).

The interest I have in a movie like this is that it shows very creative people at work doing something they love. In addition, they're at the forefront of something very new and exciting.

Watching a documentary like this allows the viewer to be present at brainstorming sessions where story boards are taped to the wall and the creative staff is discussing the ideas and how these ideas should work.

Now, fifteen years after Toy Story was created, many may take it for granted. But this movie was made at a time when a small percentage of the population knew about the internet or email. Watching their first movie's transition from idea to reality makes a fascinating documentary. The remainder of the documentary covers their pressure to match expectations with subsequent projects and demonstrates how they succeeded.

I like this kind of documentary and it reminded me of some others I've seen that I'd like to mention.

Two artist documentaries I recall seeing were at the High Museum. One was shown at the exhibit of work by Chuck Close. This was fascinating because if you see paintings by Chuck Close reproduced in magazines or books, they look like photorealism. However, when you see the paintings in person and realize the scale of these paintings, you see the visual tricks the artist uses to make the paintings look so different depending upon whether they're seen at a distance or reduced to magazine size. Watching the painter at work in the documentary was fascinating. The documenatry shows how he works despite his paralysis through a freak collapse of an artery in his spinal chord many years ago. Now he has to attach the brush to his hand and this has caused him to make adaptations in his painting style.

Another documentary I saw at the High was one that showed Jasper Johns at work. This showed him in his studio and showed the deliberation of every stroke that was made by Johns while creating lithograhic plates for a series of prints. If it was possible to show someone thinking on camera, this documentary did so.

If you're interested in moviemaking, I recommend The Making of Fanny and Alexander. This Swedish documentary shows director Ingmar Bergman at work while filming this incredible movie. As the title of my post indicates, I like to watch a day (or days) in the work life of creative people and watching Bergman direct is as rewarding as this kind of documentary can be. When you see him placing his actors (sometimes with his hands) in a position for a shot, you see that he is recreating some scene from his past, his imagination or both. Also, this is apparent when he talks about set design. I had the idea I was watching someone actually film his past and his dreams. It was very interesting viewing.

Another documentary I recall was a series on PBS a number of years ago. It was called Skyscraper. Over several weeks it detailed the design and work that went into building a skyscraper in New York. Meetings were filmed with the architect's staff and with the contractors. It was a chance to be a fly on the wall and observe some very creative (and stressful) work.

The kinds of documentaries I mentioned here would be regular programming if I were in control of a channel.