USF Contemporary Art Museum

Country Cityscapes

2001
four color photogravures with screenprinted text

other Suite of Six Prints $7,500/Individual Prints $1,500

Style/Movement: Contemporary

One of America's most influential contemporary artists, Ed Ruscha was first in residence at Graphicstudio during its early years, in 1970-71, when he completed a series of six finely hand-drawn lithographs -- among them Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Nine Swimming Pools and Real Estate Opportunities. Ruscha derived the prints' subject matter and imagery from his artist books of the same titles and they demonstrate the artist's interest in commercial art and typography.

Thirty years later in 2000-01 Ruscha returned to the atelier, this time for a suite of color photogravures and a limited-edition artist book. The early and late bodies of work share striking similarities in the interplay of word and image and in the exploration of the intersection of fine art and commercial printing techniques, and display an enduring committment to the artist book form by Ruscha, a pioneer of the artist book movement in the 1960s.

The new suite of six prints, Country Cityscapes, showcases Graphicstudio's achievement in the development of multi-plate color photogravure. Ruscha rephotographed, as 4x5 transparencies, offset lithographic, calendar-like images of magnificent landscapes, and the transparencies were made into photogravure plates. The commercial photographs are recast as high-art prints, the tracks of offset lithography and characteristics of hand photogravure both evident in the streaky surface marks and softened textures of the images. Ruscha then created blacked- or whited-out spaces for text on the prints, which he left blank. The text appears as almost invisible gray screenprint on the center bottom margin of the prints. Ironic and aggressive, the words create a startling counterpoint to the iconic nature of the imagery.