Ed Ruscha, Parking Lots (6), 1967/99, downloaded from Daniel Templon
Video still from the film "Waking Life" (2001) by Richard Linklater
In 1960, American conceptual/pop artist Ed Ruscha finished art school in LA. That same year, Texan filmmaker Richard Linklater was born. In 1967, the year that I was born, Ruscha made the unpreposessing art book, Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles. In 198-something, I first encountered Ruscha's art books while attending art school at NSCAD. My initial reaction to "Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles" was a flush of relief. I recently had a similar experience watching Richard Linklater's film "Waking Life."
Hal Foster: "...Ruscha has dampened his art in a way that nonetheless allows it to be distinctive: a deadpan-ness - funny, desolate, sometimes both - is conveyed in his homely shots of solitary gas stations or aerial images of empty parking lots..."
Richard Linkater: "One thing we’ve all learned is that the corporate father has no interest in you as an individual. So if people could be aware of that, and stay on their toes, adapt … that’s a good thing."
Metropolitain Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History: "Ruscha's books paid tribute to and slyly parodied the romantic vision of the road epitomized by writers and artists such as Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank, while also subverting the rapidly expanding market for what the artist described as "limited edition, individual, hand processed photos."
Benjamin Buchloh did a presentation at the WISP (a few years ago) using Ed Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher as they pertain to Roland Barth's Camera Lucida. It was pretty good stuff and I'll bet it's out there by now, probably in an october. That talk made me turn to Ruscha again too. I love his complex, yet inclusive humour.
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don't see a google reference but I'll keep looking
Try this: Ed Ruscha is to Joseph Kosuth what Richard Linklater is to Larry Clark.
The thing that really struck me while watching "Waking Life" was how we are still turning over the bleak homogeny of modernist urban planning with a sort of questing bewilderment. Ruscha's photographs of parking lots and swimming pools had a bemused humour to them, like, "guess what folks, there's actuallly content in this!" Linklater's film struck a similar chord. Both go beyond the abject alienation angle to a real humanist commitment to ideas. In Linklater's case it's almost embarrassing (Douglas Coupland, for example, plays it more cool...except for his little book "Life After God" which I just read ...and loved). Ruscha was more suave as well, but he was also closer to the source, to a genuine formal modernist appreciation for the patterns made by empty parking lots.
I didn't see this urban-planning critique in Waking Life--I was too annoyed/distracted by the digi-rotoscoping of live actors.
Yeah, that was geeky. But I liked it a lot. The rotoscoping gave the editors/animators all this choice about what visual information to enhance, and the result was a parade of baroque, visual adornments. Which was pretty fun if you don't get car-sick easily.
Being a minimalist (which you might never guess from my page) I oppose baroque visual adornments. Not busy-ness or complexity per se but superfluous busy-ness or complexity. I posted earlier on WL and my take was that Linklater had some footage that failed as film which he tried to gussy up with digital bells and whistles. Your still of the parking lot is more interesting to me than the film was, but I can't say why, since it's just photoshop filtering a photo.
What do you think of "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused"?
They are among my favorite films!
oh that's good! I thought the busy-ness of WL was, to put it bluntly, celebratory. As in: we may not have a bloody clue of why we're here or what we're doing, but there's lots of neat-o stuff in life to muck around with so let's get busy with it. It was over the top for sure, but the heart-on-the sleeve tone of the whole film worked for me, and the kooky art was part of it.
off topic-ish, sorry.
But I can't resist to link to another car park. Zaha Hadid, 2002.
Nice one Selma! I copied and cropped it:
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Ed Ruscha, Parking Lots (6), 1967/99, downloaded from Daniel Templon
Video still from the film "Waking Life" (2001) by Richard Linklater
In 1960, American conceptual/pop artist Ed Ruscha finished art school in LA. That same year, Texan filmmaker Richard Linklater was born. In 1967, the year that I was born, Ruscha made the unpreposessing art book, Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles. In 198-something, I first encountered Ruscha's art books while attending art school at NSCAD. My initial reaction to "Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles" was a flush of relief. I recently had a similar experience watching Richard Linklater's film "Waking Life."
Hal Foster: "...Ruscha has dampened his art in a way that nonetheless allows it to be distinctive: a deadpan-ness - funny, desolate, sometimes both - is conveyed in his homely shots of solitary gas stations or aerial images of empty parking lots..."
Richard Linkater: "One thing we’ve all learned is that the corporate father has no interest in you as an individual. So if people could be aware of that, and stay on their toes, adapt … that’s a good thing."
Metropolitain Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History: "Ruscha's books paid tribute to and slyly parodied the romantic vision of the road epitomized by writers and artists such as Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank, while also subverting the rapidly expanding market for what the artist described as "limited edition, individual, hand processed photos."
- sally mckay 12-07-2004 7:41 am
Benjamin Buchloh did a presentation at the WISP (a few years ago) using Ed Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher as they pertain to Roland Barth's Camera Lucida. It was pretty good stuff and I'll bet it's out there by now, probably in an october. That talk made me turn to Ruscha again too. I love his complex, yet inclusive humour.
--
don't see a google reference but I'll keep looking
- joester 12-08-2004 2:38 am
Try this: Ed Ruscha is to Joseph Kosuth what Richard Linklater is to Larry Clark.
The thing that really struck me while watching "Waking Life" was how we are still turning over the bleak homogeny of modernist urban planning with a sort of questing bewilderment. Ruscha's photographs of parking lots and swimming pools had a bemused humour to them, like, "guess what folks, there's actuallly content in this!" Linklater's film struck a similar chord. Both go beyond the abject alienation angle to a real humanist commitment to ideas. In Linklater's case it's almost embarrassing (Douglas Coupland, for example, plays it more cool...except for his little book "Life After God" which I just read ...and loved). Ruscha was more suave as well, but he was also closer to the source, to a genuine formal modernist appreciation for the patterns made by empty parking lots.
- sally mckay 12-08-2004 8:41 pm
I didn't see this urban-planning critique in Waking Life--I was too annoyed/distracted by the digi-rotoscoping of live actors.
- tom moody 12-08-2004 8:44 pm
Yeah, that was geeky. But I liked it a lot. The rotoscoping gave the editors/animators all this choice about what visual information to enhance, and the result was a parade of baroque, visual adornments. Which was pretty fun if you don't get car-sick easily.
- sally mckay 12-08-2004 8:52 pm
Being a minimalist (which you might never guess from my page) I oppose baroque visual adornments. Not busy-ness or complexity per se but superfluous busy-ness or complexity. I posted earlier on WL and my take was that Linklater had some footage that failed as film which he tried to gussy up with digital bells and whistles. Your still of the parking lot is more interesting to me than the film was, but I can't say why, since it's just photoshop filtering a photo.
- tom moody 12-08-2004 9:11 pm
What do you think of "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused"?
- sally mckay 12-08-2004 9:45 pm
They are among my favorite films!
- tom moody 12-08-2004 10:01 pm
oh that's good! I thought the busy-ness of WL was, to put it bluntly, celebratory. As in: we may not have a bloody clue of why we're here or what we're doing, but there's lots of neat-o stuff in life to muck around with so let's get busy with it. It was over the top for sure, but the heart-on-the sleeve tone of the whole film worked for me, and the kooky art was part of it.
- sally mckay 12-08-2004 10:11 pm
off topic-ish, sorry.
But I can't resist to link to another car park. Zaha Hadid, 2002.
- selma 12-09-2004 7:07 pm
Nice one Selma! I copied and cropped it:
- sally mckay 12-11-2004 8:21 pm