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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2.1993
People
Edward Ruscha, American (Omaha, NE born 1937)
Title
Every Building on the Sunset Strip
Classification
Prints
Work Type
artist's book
Date
1966
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/286740

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Artist's book with offset printing
Technique
Photolithograph
Dimensions
book closed: 18.2 x 14.4 x 1 cm (7 3/16 x 5 11/16 x 3/8 in.)
slip case: 18.5 x 15 x 1.5 cm (7 5/16 x 5 7/8 x 9/16 in.)
open (H x W x D): 7.6 x 162.6 x 14.4 cm (3 x 64 x 5 11/16 in.)

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Standard Reference Number
Engberg B4

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Loan in honor of Branden W. Joseph
Copyright
© Ed Ruscha
Object Number
2.1993
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary
On a Sunday morning, Ruscha loaded an automatic camera, looped around every building on the Sunset Strip to expose one mile of night-life fame in broad daylight, and accordion-folded it in book. Now unfold the vice versa panorama and a flnerie-on-wheels immediately begins to stretch out left and right, upon and down the boulevard, but so smooth and silent and straight is the sliding ride over the luster of the printed page that the caressing eye irons out any possible photographic depth in the scenography of Los Angeles. To sweep the Strip further would only wear its legend even thinner. Ruscha's photo-books were a complete anomaly in the art scene of sixties. They later became a brand name once they have been situated by critics and historians in relation to Marcel Duchamp's ready-made and Andy Warhol's serial reproduction techniques (both artists had their first American exhibit, in Los Angeles, in 1962 when Ruscha published his initial Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations) as well as the aestheticizing of everyday architecture with Robert Venturi's 1972 Learning from Las Vegas. They also troubled the conventions of artist's books by using offset printing to develop "a mass-production of a higher order," and more importantly, freed the double-bind between book and photograph in which one was either the commentary, or the illustration of the other.

Publication History

  • Susan Dackerman, ed., Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2015), pp. 204-205, cat. 56, ill. (color)

Exhibition History

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Verification Level

This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu