1984, Ed Ruscha, The Music from the Balconies -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art (special exhibition)
From the museum label: This work belongs to a large body of paintings Ruscha began in the 1980s, in which he overlaid landscapes with texts. Describing his vision for the painting as a "spoken word transmission," he entrusted artist Nancy Reese (with whom he collaborated on three other works) to develop the composition on her own, later overlaying her beautiful landscape and serene skyline with an unsettling except from the 1975 dystopian novel High-Rise by J. G. Ballard, a writer Ruscha much admires. The pairing exemplifies the internal contradiction characteristic of many of Ruscha's other works.
1984, Ed Ruscha, The Music from the Balconies -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art (special exhibition)
From the museum label: This work belongs to a large body of paintings Ruscha began in the 1980s, in which he overlaid landscapes with texts. Describing his vision for the painting as a "spoken word transmission," he entrusted artist Nancy Reese (with whom he collaborated on three other works) to develop the composition on her own, later overlaying her beautiful landscape and serene skyline with an unsettling except from the 1975 dystopian novel High-Rise by J. G. Ballard, a writer Ruscha much admires. The pairing exemplifies the internal contradiction characteristic of many of Ruscha's other works.