Top 36 Edward Ruscha Quotes

#1. The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.

Edward Ruscha

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#2. My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of facts; my book is more like a collection of Ready-mades.

Edward Ruscha

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#3. I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist - or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.

Edward Ruscha

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#4. The fact that few painter-fine-artists used photography in their work made it appealing.

Edward Ruscha

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#5. When you're on a highway, viewing the western U.S. with the mountains and the flatness and the desert and all that, it's very much like my paintings.

Edward Ruscha

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#6. I was attracted to the concept of Hollywood and the lifestyle here. But I've grown to mistrust it because it has changed. I didn't bargain for digital access parking in some concrete structure. Real heaven for me was to drive somewhere and park right in front. Now the city is going vertical.

Edward Ruscha

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#7. Perhaps there would be more anxiety in my work if I lived in New York.

Edward Ruscha

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#8. People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.

Edward Ruscha

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#9. When I first did the book on gasoline stations, people would look at it and say, Are you kidding or what? Why are you doing this? In a sense, that's what I was after: I was after the head-scratching.

Edward Ruscha

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#10. When I paint a picture of a house, that goes back to my roots.

Edward Ruscha

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#11. My friends and neighbors were always fixing their cars. Soldiers who felt restless wanted to work on something, and they understood cars. Me, I like to look at cars but I was never really a mechanic.

Edward Ruscha

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#12. I have no social agenda with my work. I'm deadpan about it.

Edward Ruscha

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#13. Above all, the photographs I use are not arty in any sense of the word. I think photography is dead as fine art; its only place is in the commercial world, for technical or information purposes.

Edward Ruscha

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#14. I'm interested in glorifying something that we in the world would say doesn't deserve being glorified. Something that's forgotten, focused on as though it were some sort of sacred object.

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#15. I believe in intuition and approaching things as instant gratification. Just do the things you want to do, make the kind of pictures you want to make.

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#16. I travel a lot, but I don't come away with new inspiration.

Edward Ruscha

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#17. The subject [of Los Angeles] became a general metaphor for anxiety and the speed of modern life.

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#18. I was raised with the Bible Belt mentality, and by coming to California, I came out of this dark place and unlearned a lot of things I'd been taught.

Edward Ruscha

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#19. When I drive, I check out everything I see, and just taking in all those observations helps me think. So I draw and write a lot as I drive, and I know that's dangerous, but I manage to do it off to the side, with my notes on the seat.

Edward Ruscha

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#20. Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. 'On the Road' exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody - part hope for the world, part nostalgic.

Edward Ruscha

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#21. When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were gutteral utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase.

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#22. I don't watch TV, so I feel like I'm left out of the American fabric or something.

Edward Ruscha

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#23. Traveling is irritating to me, but not driving. Going to the airport makes me nervous, but when I set out to just take a leisurely drive, it's blue skies and puffy clouds and time.

Edward Ruscha

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#24. I wasn't captivated by the romance of Paris or London. I love visiting, but I'd rather be in L.A.

Edward Ruscha

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#25. I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.

Edward Ruscha

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#26. I barely knew I wanted to be an artist. I liked my art classes and painting was fun, I guess, but I didn't realize that seeing the country was going to inspire me to further explore that ... but that's what it did.

Edward Ruscha

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#27. All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.

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#28. Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera.

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#29. As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.

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#30. Yes, there's a certain power to a photograph. The camera has a way of disorienting a person, if it wants to and, for me, when it disorients, it's got real value.

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#31. Most artists are doing basically the same thing - staying off the streets.

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#32. I'd read about Los Angeles and this fact stuck in my mind: that the city gained 1,000 new people every day. In 1956! A thousand people every day! I felt: 'I want to be part of that.'

Edward Ruscha

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#33. I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

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#34. I don't do social media of any kind. If I did, I may as well join Scientology.

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#35. The difference between psychedelia and digitalia ages will seem like a smooth blending in years to come and will be a mere blip on the screen.

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#36. Part of ego is displaying the ego. I've got ego, and I think I'm really good. But maybe I fall down in trying to sell it to people.

Edward Ruscha

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