Smithsonian.com

Although born in Omaha, Nebraska, Ed Ruscha began his artistic career in Oklahoma. Literally. In 1956, at the age of 19, Ruscha set out on Route 66 from Oklahoma City (where he had lived for 15 formative years) to Los Angeles. It was the first in a series of drives that took him past the sites that would form the basis of his 1962 book Twentysix Gasoline Stations (above, middle) and reappear in his later images of hotels, parking lots, swimming pools and the grizzled glamour of the Sunset Strip.

An exhibition opening today at the Price Tower Arts Center proves that Oklahoma’s significance in the contemporary art world goes far beyond that tidbit of Ruschian trivia. The state has also bred and/or trained such artists as David Salle, Joe Goode, Larry Clark, Joe Andoe and Carolyn Brady. “Out of Oklahoma: Contemporary Artists From Ruscha to Andoe” features about 35 of these artists’ paintings (including Ruscha’s “Black Hollywood” [1984]), sculpture, photographs and works on paper in an exhibition that ranges from Pop Art, abstraction and minimalism to photorealism and new figurative painting.

According to Richard P. Townsend, who curated the exhibition, the show “reveals a little known-and little suspected-aspect of later 20th-century American art” while spotlighting Oklahoma’s “innovative spirit and pioneer attitude.” It’s a fitting way to celebrate the state’s centennial. (More…)

The other day, I sat by a pond. A soft rain patterned its surface with circles, radiating and vanishing in a green glassiness. So easily drawn by a mere raindrop, a perfect circle seems like the simplest of forms—and yet not a soul has ever drawn a simple, perfect circle freehand.

If we can build great pyramids without pulleys, wheels or iron tools, swim the English Channel or run four minute miles, why can’t we draw perfect circles? It turns out we’re not built to draw perfect circles–even the most naturally gifted artists.  (More…)

Can comic strips finally get some respect?

It seems novelists from Tolstoy to today owe cartoonish drawings a debt of gratitude. Once upon a time, words, letters and images were one and the same. The noted linguist John Algeo says, “There can be no doubt that writing grew out of drawing, the wordless comic-strip type of drawing…” Many pre-literate Native American cultures used pictures to communicate. When Spanish missionaries attempted to convert the peoples of the South American Incan empire, they rewrote biblical texts as comic-book style tomes, to show Catholic prayers and rituals. (More…)

What happened to all of the scribbles, doodles, and sketches from Medieval and Renaissance times? Today artists and patrons take pride in such drawings—from brute childhood masterpieces in crayon, stuck on refrigerators everywhere, to the work of Jim Dine, who exhibits drawings and paintings with equal ease. Yet during Medieval and Renaissance times, paper was often scarce and expensive. Fledgling artists honed their craft on erasable drawing boards, each drawing as impermanent as that mysterious magic dust in an Etch-A-Sketch.  (More…)