This is the catalogue for Ed Ruscha’s exhibition “Los Angeles Apartments” which will be held at the Kunstmuseum
Basel from June till September 2013. In 1965, Ed Ruscha published Some Los Angeles Apartments, the third of his
ongoing series of photographic books, and completed a group of ten related drawings that depict examples of the
ubiquitous Southern California apartment building. The exhibition will show the preparatory studies for these drawings
which were recently acquired by the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Kunstmuseum Basel. They are based
directly on the photographs Ruscha made of the apartment buildings. Included also, are photographs from Ruscha’s
Gasoline Stations series of 1962, one of which served as a model for the painting of Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas
of 1963. By immediately juxtaposing preparatory studies, drawings and photographs, Ruscha’s working method is
clearly highlighted and the significance of photography for his passage between abstraction and realism made evident.
Los Angeles Apartments
von Ed Ruscha
