A Night at the deYoung: An Exclusive Walk Through of Ruscha's Exhibition

August 25, 2016

This July, LSS Art Advisory attended the opening dinner and a private walk through with curator Karin Breuer of the deYoung Museum’s exhibit Ed Ruscha and the Great American West. Karin Breuer is the head curator of the Achenbach Foundation of the Graphic Arts, which owns the largest collection of works of art on paper in the western United States.  The exhibition celebrates the 78 year old artist’s commitment to exploring the American West, and his residency in California for over 50 years. Organized thematically as a sort of road trip through his career, the show reminds us of Ruscha’s versatility and talent early on as a painter, photographer and printmaker. Highlights are Ruscha’s early Standard Oil painting in 1963, and how it evolved to a blind embossed print in 2011, and juxtaposed rows of photographs taken from the same LA rooftops in 1961 and again in 2011.

Curator Karin Breuer lecturing about Ed Ruscha’s La Brea, Sunset, Orange, De Longpre, 1999

Ed Ruscha, A Particular Kind of Heaven, mid 1980’s

Ed Ruscha in front of Standard Oil, 1963. Photo Credit: deYoung Museum