Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, Drawings 1974–1984

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Ed Ruscha: Custom-Built Intrigue, Drawings 1974–1984 at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. It features a decade of text drawings rendered in pastel, dry pigment, and various edible substances. Using a reverse-stenciling graphic technique, Ruscha cuts out stencils in the shape of letters and places them on paper. He then applies pigment around the covered area with unconventional tools, such as cotton puffs and Q-tips, to create his typography utilizing negative space rather than line.

The publication includes an introduction by Bob Monk and an essay by Lisa Turvey, editor of the Ed Ruscha catalogue raisonné of works on paper, examining the artist’s use of humor and subversion of the symbolic system of language.