Friday, 4 January 2013

Ed Ruscha, 'Some Los Angeles Apartments', 1970

















'Some Los Angeles Apartments'
Ed Ruscha b. 1937
Self-published book
180 x 140
1970
Bequeathed to me by Audrey Melville Barker
£800.00
2013.004


Its fantastic of course and its mint, museum people use these sorts of specialist terms all the time. Its part of a library bequeathed to us in Audrey's will. In these days of google one does not have to look far to find the same wording endlessly trotted out - this (following) has been lifted from Amazon by someone who lifted it from somewhere else. 

'Second edition (1970; originally published 1965 in an edition of 700 unnumbered copies). Soft cover. White matt wrappers with title printed in lime green on cover and spine, with glassine dust jacket. Photographs, artist's book concept and design by Ed Ruscha. Unpaginated (48 pp.), with 34 black and white illustrations printed by Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, Los Angeles. 7 x 5-1/16 inches. This second edition was limited to 3000 copies. [Originally published in 1965 in an edition of 700 copies.]'

Audrey and then husband Dennis subscribed to these publications which were mailed out them at their home in Lanercost and I have some others in the series sadly not including the fantastic 'Twentysix Gasoline Stations' which Ruscha made in 1963. Our library is in the unheated barn and at the mercy of mice (This year I have mounted a determined defence) and I have been thinking of ways of cataloguing it and housing it that reconstruct Audrey's house and defend against mice. e.g. 'Books acquired by marriage to Dennis' (Deathly boring), 'Books kept mainly in the toilet', 'Books bought on trips to London occasioned by the inconvenience of sitting on the New Collaborations panel' and so on. The reason its here now within reach of the blog is that there are a selection of things that I feel I just can't leave in the barn. Tomorrow I will catalogue Peter McGlynn's drawing which was commissioned by my friend Jamie Warde Aldam. It is based on a proposal I made to the now defunct Storey Gallery (It was politely ignored) to basically sit in their gallery cataloguing the library and making shelves/crates etc. etc. and pass the time of day with anyone who came in while I did it perhaps even getting people to help and possibly not finishing the job. I'd still be up for this if anyone would like to commission me to sort out my own library. 


Links
Some Los Angeles Apartments (Getty Museum)
Ed Ruscha (Getty)


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