Ed Ruscha's Hollywood
By the 1980s, the Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha was already two decades into a storied career as one of the leading artists in the United States. Known for his wry use of the everyday and his combinations of landscape and text, his work was shot through with the crisp, graphic sensibility of his early training in advertising design. Perhaps more than any other West Coast artist, Ruscha used the city of Los Angeles – its myths and dreams, and by extension the myths and dreams of America – as the primary subject matter of his art.
Ruscha was known for throwing legendary parties at his studio on Western Avenue in Hollywood. The studio had a direct view of the Hollywood sign, and at the time, he said that if he could see the sign out the window, he'd know it was safe to go outside. Otherwise, it was too smoggy and he should stay indoors. Always alert to irony, he recognized that the Los Angeles smog made for spectacular sunsets, the colors of which he would revisit again and again in his work.
One night in the early 1980s, Ruscha threw a big party after an opening, and he asked his friends at Lucy's El Adobe Cafe to cater the event. Lucy's was an obvious choice. The restaurant, founded by Frank and Lucy Casado in 1964 at 5536 Melrose Avenue, was a cultural and political hub in the city. A simple neighborhood family spot, it was situated near the Desilu and Paramount studios, at the edge of a neighborhood that was, at the time, home to the upper echelon of Los Angeles – the Chandlers, the O'Malleys, the Ahmansons – and was also right around the corner from Ruscha's studio.
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