#ruscha

Staff Pick of the Week!

Today’s Staff Pick of the Week explores pop artist Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Between 1962 and 1978 Ruscha (b. December 16, 1937) created sixteen small artist’s books, Twentysix Gasoline Stations was his first and is widely regarded as the first modern artist book. Inspired by uncomplicated books he saw while visiting Europe, Ruscha set out to compose a neutral “collection of ‘facts’” and began photographing gas stations along Route 66 in the early sixties. In an interview after the book was published Ruscha shared that he’d taken sixty photographs and edited them down to twenty-six by removing any he thought might be too interesting. The book was not well received in the public eye but was a clear and noted inspiration to other artists of the time, including Corita Kent and Andy Warhol.  

Twentysix Gasoline Stations is a remarkable collection marking a moment in time that conjures the great American road trip, highway culture, and striking examples of lettering and logos from the sixties. As Ruscha intended it to be an unextraordinary item, it was printed in three editions to supposedly flood the market. Twentysix Gasoline Stations was first published in 1963 in an edition of 400, the Special Collections copy is part of the larger third edition published in 1969 by the Cunningham Press out of California. Our collection also holds most of Ruscha’s other sixteen artist books including the popular Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, and Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass.

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern