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When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were gutteral utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase.

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
Flowers
Began
Utterances
Flower
Vase
Painting
Vases
Words
Smash
Like
Utterance
Paintings
Boss

More quotes by 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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Nothing's changed except the dates on the newspapers. I'm in my same skin thinking the same old thoughts. The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.
Edward Ruscha
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Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera.
Edward Ruscha
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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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I barely knew I wanted to be an artist. I liked my art classes and painting was fun, I guess, but I didn't realize that seeing the country was going to inspire me to further explore that... but that's what it did.
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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People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.
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'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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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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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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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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The subject [of Los Angeles] became a general metaphor for anxiety and the speed of modern life.
Edward Ruscha
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The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.
Edward Ruscha
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When you're on a highway, viewing the western U.S. with the mountains and the flatness and the desert and all that, it's very much like my paintings.
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 don't watch TV, so I feel like I'm left out of the American fabric or something.
Edward Ruscha
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Part of ego is displaying the ego. I've got ego, and I think I'm really good. But maybe I fall down in trying to sell it to people.
Edward Ruscha
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As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.
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