id: 160195 accession number: 1998.114 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1998.114 updated: 2023-08-23 23:41:38.635000 Bronson Tropics, 1965. Edward Ruscha (American, 1937-). Graphite powder and graphite wash, with point of brush and graphite wash; sheet: 35.5 x 53.7 cm (14 x 21 1/8 in.); image: 33 x 54.6 cm (13 x 21 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1998.114 title: Bronson Tropics title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1965 creation date earliest: 1965 creation date latest: 1965 current location: creditline: Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund copyright: --- culture: America, 20th century technique: graphite powder and graphite wash, with point of brush and graphite wash department: Drawings collection: DR - American 20th Century type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Edward Ruscha (American, 1937-) - artist --- measurements: Sheet: 35.5 x 53.7 cm (14 x 21 1/8 in.); Image: 33 x 54.6 cm (13 x 21 1/2 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: cream(1) wove paper watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: signed, lower left, in graphite: Edward Ruscha 1965 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2000-08-27T00:00:00 Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002). title: Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha opening date: 2004-06-24T00:00:00 Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (organizer) (June 24-September 26, 2004). title: Ed Ruscha: Road Tested opening date: 2011-01-23T00:00:00 Ed Ruscha: Road Tested. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX (organizer) (January 23-April 17, 2011). title: Ed Ruscha - Los Angeles Apartments opening date: 2013-06-08T00:00:00 Ed Ruscha - Los Angeles Apartments. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland (organizer) (June 8-September 29, 2013). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Cleveland Museum of Art, Main Gallery Rotation (Gallery 229) (April 14 - July 28, 2014). * Ed Ruscha: New Paintings and a Retrospective of Works on Paper. Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (1998). * Edward Ruscha Los Angeles Apartments 1965. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (July 27 - October 14, 1990). * The Works of Ed Ruscha. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (March 25 - May 23, 1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (July 8 - September 5, 1982); Vancouver Art Gallery (October 4 - November 28, 1982); San Antonio Museum of Art (December 27, 1982 - February 20, 1983); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (March 17 - May 15, 1983). * Graphic Works by Edward Ruscha. Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand (August - October 1978). * Ed Ruscha. Stedelijk Museum, Prentenkabinet, Amsterdam (March 26 - May 9, 1976). * Edward Ruscha (Ed-Werd Rew-Shay), Young Artist. Minneapolis Institute of Arts (April 18 - May 28, 1972). --- PROVENANCE Edward Ruscha [1937-], Los Angeles, CA date: 1965 - 1998 footnotes: citations: (Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: 1998 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1998- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Ruscha edited out window treatments and trees from his original photograph to make the building seem more streamlined. digital description: Edward Ruscha has lived and worked in Los Angeles since the 1950s. He developed an interest in commercial imagery early on, using words and advertising logos to structure his artworks. In particular, Ruscha often depicted the commercial architecture and car culture characteristic of California. This drawing relates to Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), one of numerous photobooks that the artist self-published throughout the 1960s. For this project, Ruscha photographed unremarkable apartment buildings, highlighting their sameness through seriality. He revisited ten of the photographs as drawings, such as this one, in which he further simplified the building's structure, flattening and streamlining it through smoothly applied graphite powder. wall description: Edward Ruscha has lived and worked in Los Angeles since he moved there after high school in the 1950s. He was one of the first artists on the West Coast to work in the style that became known as Pop art. Like the New York artist Andy Warhol, Ruscha became interested in widely recognizable, commercial images. He was also influenced by the open, car-oriented spaces of Los Angeles, and by the architectural makeup of the city. Bronson Tropics derives from an illustrated book, Some Los Angeles Apartments, which the artist photographed himself and published in 1965. The buildings Ruscha photo-graphed were unremarkable, but he was interested in showing them objectively, presenting them in a context that would make the viewer take a second look. With this drawing, he transformed the look of the original building even further. Using a tonal technique of graphite powder, he streamlined the appearance of the façade to give the work the "slickness" of an advertisement. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS DeGrazia, Diane and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. page number: Mentioned: pp. 280-281, 298; Reproduced: p. 281 url: Edward Ruscha (Ed-Werd Rew-Shay), Young Artist. Exh. Cat. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1972. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: no. 14 url: Graphic Works by Edward Ruscha. Exh. Cat. Auckland: Auckland City Art Gallery, 1978. page number: Mentioned: p. 87, 122, no. 61; Reproduced: p. 87 url: Guacamole Airlines and Other Drawings by Edward Ruscha. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 20, no. 12 url: Livet, Anne. The Works of Edward Ruscha. Exh. Cat. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1982 page number: Mentioned: p. 176, no. 66; reproduced: p. 66, plate 28 url: Edward Ruscha: Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go. Exh. Cat. Lake Worth, FL: Lannan Museum, 1988. page number: Mentioned: p. 61, no. 24; Reproduced: p. 38 url: Marshall, Richard. Edward Ruscha: Los Angeles Apartments, 1965. Exh. Cat. New York: Whitney Museum, 1990. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 19. url: Whitington, G. Luther. "Where the West Sinks Slowly into the Sun." Journal of Art (April 1991): 26-27. page number: Reproduced: p. 27 url: Wakefield, Neville and Dave Hickey. Ed Ruscha: New Paintings and a Retrospective of Works on Paper. Exh. Cat. London: Anthony d'Offay, 1998. page number: Reproduced: p. 27 url: Cleveland Museum of Art, “Cleveland Acquires Major New Sculpture, Rare Chinese Prints, Contemporary Prints, Drawings & Photographs,” October 30, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4215 Perrone, Jeff. "Ed Ruscha's Illuminated Manuscripts." Parkett 55 (1999): 26-39. page number: Reproduced: p. 29 url: Schwartz, Alexandra, ed. Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. page number: Reproduced: p. 222 url: Rowell, Margit, and Cornelia H. Butler. Cotton Puffs, Q-Tips, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: no. 32 url: Wolf, Sylvia. Ed Ruscha and Photography. Exh. Cat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2004. page number: Mentioned: p. 285, no. 269; Reproduced: p. 233 url: Auping, Michael. Ed Ruscha: Road Tested. Exh. Cat. Fort Worth: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2011. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 67 url: Müller, Christian. Ed Ruscha: Los Angeles Apartments. Exh. Cat. Basel: Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, 2013. page number: Mentioned: pp. 67-68, 138-142, 160, no. 71; Reproduced: p. 142 url: --- IMAGES