Ed Ruscha: Course of Empire

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• AuthorLise Riopelle
• PublisherThe National Gallery
• Date of publicationJuin 2018
• Language(s)English
• IllustrationsColour ill.
• Pages48
• DescriptionGrand format
• Price (VAT incl.)28.00 €
• AvailabilityOn order

Exhibition at the National Gallery, Londres, 11 June - 7 October 2018

Over the span of his six-decade career, Ed Ruscha (1937-) has created an elegant, stylised vision of an overlooked modern American landscape of petrol stations, highways and industrial units.

This exhibition catalogue presents Ruscha's ten-painting installation that evokes Thomas Cole's epic five-painting cycle The Course of Empire (1834-1836). Unlike Cole's grandiose vision of the rise and fall of a classical civilisation, Ruscha's Course of Empire is a seemingly barren, simplified vision, revealing his preoccupation for Los Angeles urban landscape: utilitarian structures with no pretension to beauty but redolent of economic might and global reach, their mundane forms evolving in response to material needs.

Price (VAT incl.) : 28.00 €