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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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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
Book
Scratching
Looks
Kidding
First
Gasoline
Would
Stations
People
Head
Sense
Look
Firsts

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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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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Good art should elicit a response of 'Huh? Wow!' as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?'
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 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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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 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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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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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 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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People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.
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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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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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
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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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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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Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera.
Edward Ruscha
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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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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