- Gagosian’s flawless curation of Ed Ruscha’s On the Road
Steidl has paired with its darling artist, Ed Ruscha, to once again produce a book that sets a new standard of “over-the-top.” A $10,000 book? What recession?
Steidl recently released an edition limited to 350 copies of Jack Kerouac’s magum opus, On the Road, that was co-published with Gagosian. The book comes in an embossed slipcase and each copy is illustrated with fifty-five of Ruscha’s own photographs that are tipped-in by hand. The book, as well as all fifty-five of the original plates, are currently on display in Gagosian’s Madison Avenue space.
Ruscha tells us of the appeal for this massive undertaking, “The original novel was published in 1957 and it’s about a group of crazy young people who just travel back and forth across the United States. Sometimes they hitch-hike and sometimes they drive cars. They steal cars and just want to be on the road the whole time. I’ve always liked that notion.”
It seems only natural that Ruscha would choose this for a project, given that he is one of the foremost representative American artists of the twentieth century and considered one of the fathers of the pop art movement. He was a part of the now-renowned 1962 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum that was curated by Walter Hopps and included other pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Wayne Thiebaud. His iconic paintings, including archetypal landscapes, Hollywood cityscapes, and Route 66-esque creations, have subliminally earned a place in gallery-goer’s minds as quintessential American art.
- On the Road at the Gagosian Gallery
Of their new exhibit and Ruscha taking it on, Gagosian tells us that “Over the last couple of years, Ruscha has turned his attention to On the Road, resulting in his own version of Kerouac’s Beat bible. Kerouac’s entire text appears accompanied by black and white photographic illustrations that Ruscha has either taken himself, commissioned from other photographers, or selected from found images to refer closely to the details and impressions that the author describes, from car parts to jazz instruments, from sandwich stacks to tire burns on a desert road.”
This exhibit will run through January 23rd.
