Over the span of his six-decade career, Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) has created a distinctively stylized vision of the modern American landscape of gas stations, highways, and industrial buildings. Incorporating text, stark typography, and commercial logos, the artists multivalent images both portray and interrogate the contemporary worlds relentlessly packaged environment. By placing Ruschas celebrated Course of Empirea ten-painting installation originally created for the 2005 Venice Biennalein dialogue with Thomas Coles five-picture cycle The Course of Empire from the 1830s, this catalogue offers a fresh perspective on each of these disparate masterpieces. Unlike Coles grandiose vision of the rise and fall of classical civilization, Ruschas work comprises five black-and-white Los Angeles landscapes made in 1992 paired with color representations of the same sites as they appeared ten years laterand draws attention to how often-overlooked changes in the evolving urban landscape are redolent of economic might and globalization or decline and stagnation.

Published by National Gallery Company, London/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The National Gallery, London
(06/11/201810/07/2018)