Santa Monica Blvd. from Roxbury to Wilshire Blvd.

Photography and Media

1967

Ed Ruscha
American, born 1937

In a series of books made in the 1960s, Ed Ruscha produced deadpan visual lists that he called “a collection of ‘facts.’” This photograph was included in his 1967 book Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, for which he hired photographer Art Alanis to take pictures from a helicopter above downtown Los Angeles on a quiet Sunday morning. Although Ruscha instructed Alanis on which sites to shoot, he later said, “Those patterns and their abstract design quality mean nothing to me. I’ll tell you what is more interesting: the oil dropping on the ground.” Oil droppings reveal the desirability of certain parking locations in a city whose lifeblood is the car, thus offering a kind of sociological map of behavior patterns in Southern California.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Ed Ruscha
Title: Santa Monica Blvd. from Roxbury to Wilshire Blvd.
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1967
Medium: Gelatin silver print, from "Parking Lots"
Inscriptions: Unmarked recto; inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: ""SANTA MONICA BLVD. FROM ROXBURY TO WILSHIRE BLVD.""; signed and inscribed verso, center, in graphite: "Ed Ruscha 1967"; verso, lower left, in graphite: "PH.67.ER/G-5.C (DETAIL) REPRO #31 OF 31 IN BOOK"
Dimensions: Image: 13.5 × 33.8 cm (5 3/8 × 13 5/16 in.); Paper: 14.1 × 35.4 cm (5 9/16 × 13 15/16 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Comer Foundation
Reference Number: 2010.507

Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 10 Permanent Collection Rotation, August 2011–April 2012.

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