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I'd read about Los Angeles and this fact stuck in my mind: that the city gained 1,000 new people every day. In 1956! A thousand people every day! I felt: 'I want to be part of that.

Edward Ruscha

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Edward Ruscha
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: December 16
Artist
Designer
Draftsperson
Film Director
Filmmaker
Graphic Artist
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Omaha
Nebraska
Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruschā
Edward Joseph Ruscha
Edward Rusha
Edward Ruscha
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV
Mind
Thousand
People
Cities
Read
Fact
Felt
Angeles
Facts
Gained
Part
Stuck
Every
City

More quotes by Edward Ruscha

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I was raised with the Bible Belt mentality, and by coming to California, I came out of this dark place and unlearned a lot of things I'd been taught.
Edward Ruscha
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I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist - or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.
Edward Ruscha
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When I first did the book on gasoline stations, people would look at it and say, Are you kidding or what? Why are you doing this? In a sense, that's what I was after: I was after the head-scratching.
Edward Ruscha
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I never expected to sell my art. It wasn't like today where you come out of art school and they promise you a future. Now it's almost regulated in a way. When we came out of school, we just wanted to make art that'd blow your hair back and do it for sport. There was no commercial possibility that we saw.
Edward Ruscha
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Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.
Edward Ruscha
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Traveling is irritating to me, but not driving. Going to the airport makes me nervous, but when I set out to just take a leisurely drive, it's blue skies and puffy clouds and time.
Edward Ruscha
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Good art should elicit a response of 'Huh? Wow!' as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?'
Edward Ruscha
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Above all, the photographs I use are not arty in any sense of the word. I think photography is dead as fine art its only place is in the commercial world, for technical or information purposes.
Edward Ruscha
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I think the most interesting stuff comes from people who've just got nothing to lose. You know, let's kamikaze this thing - just throw themselves in it, devil may care.
Edward Ruscha
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Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. 'On the Road' exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody - part hope for the world, part nostalgic.
Edward Ruscha
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People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.
Edward Ruscha
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I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified. Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.
Edward Ruscha
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As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.
Edward Ruscha
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I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.
Edward Ruscha
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All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.
Edward Ruscha
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I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.
Edward Ruscha
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I was attracted to the concept of Hollywood and the lifestyle here. But I've grown to mistrust it because it has changed. I didn't bargain for digital access parking in some concrete structure. Real heaven for me was to drive somewhere and park right in front. Now the city is going vertical.
Edward Ruscha
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Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera.
Edward Ruscha
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I have no social agenda with my work. I'm deadpan about it.
Edward Ruscha
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The subject [of Los Angeles] became a general metaphor for anxiety and the speed of modern life.
Edward Ruscha