Restraint

"I began to see that the only thing to do would be a preconceived image. It was an enormous freedom to be premeditated about my art. I wanted to make pictures but I didn't want to paint. Some painters just love paint-they get up in the morning and grab a brush, not knowing what they are going to do, but they just have to have that hot brush moving those colors. But I was more interested in the end result than I was in the means to an end."
Ed Ruscha, quoted in F. Fehlau, "Ed Ruscha: I Have This Kind of Lofty Idea of Landscape Being Pivotal to making a Picture," Flash Art 138, January-February 1988, p. 70.


This work will appear in a forthcoming volume of the Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné.