Records. Photographs by Jerry McMillan. Heavy Industry Publications, 1971. 72. pp Duodecimo (7 1/16 x 5 1/2 in.). First and only edition (2000 copies). Stiff printed wrappers. 60 black-and-white reproductions.
"All of [Ruscha's] work is premeditated, especially the cult photo-books, which, in good Warholian fashion, are as advertised...'I don’t even look at it as photography,' Ruscha has said, 'they're just images to fill a book,' the parameters of which are set beforehand. Several books survey typical spaces of LA, and the presentation is as 'neuter gender' as possible: 'They’re a collection of 'facts' . . . a collection of readymade.' Like many Duchampian artists from Jasper Johns (an early influence) to Gerhard Richter, 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; and the apparently arbitrary numbers (why nine pools?) only add to the blank absurdity...
--Hal Foster, At the Whitney, London Review of Books, 2 September 2004.
Fine.
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