Ray's a laugh

by Richard Billingham

"One of the most consistently inventive artists of recent times, Los Angeles-based Ed Ruscha has been a pioneer in the use of language and imagery drawn from the popular media. From his early powerful word paintings to his influential artist books of the sixties and seventies to his recent colorful views of generic mountains, Ruscha has investigated the spaces between highways and journeys, images and words, abstraction and representation, public imagery and the contemporary landscape. In this publication, which accompanies a major retrospective exhibition organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Neal Benezra, Kerry Brougher, and Phyllis Rosenzweig focus on all aspects of Ruscha's career, revealing him not merely as an artist closely linked with Los Angeles, but as an important international figure in contemporary art."--Amazon.