Ed Ruscha in conversation with acclaimed interviewer and cultural interlocutor Paul Holdengräber.
Thorne Hall, Occidental College
This event is free but tickets are required.
Join us for an evening of conversation between renowned visual artist Ed Ruscha with acclaimed interviewer and cultural interlocutor Paul Holdengräber.
Oxy Live is a series of conversations with a diverse lineup of cultural luminaries at the forefront of their fields for thought-provoking discussions hosted by acclaimed cultural interlocutor, Paul Holdengräber. All conversations are open to the public at no cost, creating a space for diverse communities to join in the conversation and explore ideas together.
The series is funded through the generous support of Occidental trustee and alumna, Lisa Coscino ’85 and the Occidental Class of '74.
At the start of his artistic career, Ed Ruscha called himself an “abstract artist ... who deals with subject matter.” Abandoning academic connotations that came to be associated with Abstract Expressionism, he looked instead to tropes of advertising and brought words—as form, symbol, and material—to the forefront of painting. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial.
Ruscha was born on December 16, 1937, in Omaha, Nebraska. His family moved to Oklahoma City in 1941. In 1956, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles, where he attended Chouinard Art Institute, from which he graduated in 1960.
Ruscha’s early paintings attracted notice as part of the Pop art movement of the 1960s; his art also has antecedents in Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, and would be central to Conceptual art. His work includes paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, and films, and is in the collections of major national and international museums. Ruscha lives and works in Los Angeles.
Paul Holdengräber is an interviewer and curator. He was the founding executive director of Onassis Los Angeles (OLA). Previously, and for 14 years, he was founder and director of The New York Public Library’s LIVE from the NYPL cultural series where he interviewed and hosted over 600 events, holding conversations with everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Wes Anderson to Helen Mirren, Werner Herzog to Mike Tyson. Before his tenure at the Library, Holdengräber was the founder and director of “The Institute for Art & Cultures” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, Claremont Graduate University among others. In 2003, the French Government named Holdengräber Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and then promoted him in 2012 to the rank of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2010, The President of Austria awarded him the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.
