Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha
Oct 17, 2004 – Jan 17, 2005
In his acclaimed drawings, Edward Ruscha depicts gas stations, landmarks, words, and vernacular phrases with irresistible humor and striking graphic techniques. Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha constitutes the historic Pop artist’s first major drawings retrospective, featuring two hundred works made between 1959 and 2002.
Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors is organized chronologically to trace the development of Ruscha’s drawing practice, from early, abstract works to his latest experiments representing the light manipulations of cinema and photography, as in The End #23 (2002), an acrylic and ink re-rendering of the scratched footage of a film’s end card. The title of the exhibition derives from a conversation between the Ruscha and the curator, where the artist admitted of his drawings: “it's just cotton puffs, Q-tips, smoke and mirrors”—the former two being tools he used, and “smoke and mirrors” referring to their illusory effect.
The exhibition travels to MOCA Grand Avenue and then to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.
Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha is organized by Margit Rowell, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.