Ed Ruscha

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photo Todd Cole

photographs by TODD COLE
interview by BILL POWERS
 

From the outside,ED RUSCHA’s studio in Venice Beach, California, resembles one of his famous Course of Empire paintings — an anonymous-looking industrial complex, minus his trademark signage. Ruscha has been working there since 1982. We stopped for a short
visit with of one of California’s best-known painters — and one
of our favorite artists.

photo Todd Cole

BILL POWERS — You live in Swifty Lazar’s old house. He was the Hollywood super-agent who threw legendary Oscar parties every year, before Vanity Fair started hosting theirs.
ED RUSCHA — Yes. I met him once, but we didn’t know each other. If you ever laid eyes on the guy there’s no way you’d forget him. He was a little doddering man with giant, circular, dark-rimmed glasses who took little…