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Eliciting Meanings in Ed Ruscha’s Course of Empire: Exhibition Conditions and Reception
Sinkler, Judith Legare
Sinkler, Judith Legare
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Abstract
The representation of urban decay has become a distinctly American theme. Treated bymany artists, Thomas Cole notably made a cycle called The Course of Empire (1836) as atestament to the moral wickedness of empire. He righteously painted five stages of empire,drawing on his own experiences traveling through Europe. He wanted to warn Americanschampioning of Manifest Destiny and celebrating moving west, justifying expansion as“progress”. In 2005, Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha introduced his own cycle of paintingsto these issues by appropriating Cole’s title. Painted between 1992 and 2005, the ten urbanlandscape paintings are called Course of Empire.Through his choice in title, Ruscha draws on the figure of Thomas Cole, one of the mostprominent figures of landscape art in America. Presenting his own cycle through a mediated,historicizing lens that inherently references the American landscape tradition, Ruscha draws ondifferent themes including time, empire and progress. This thesis aims to analyze the way inwhich the appropriation of Cole’s title lends meaning to Ruscha’s cycle; the reception ofRuscha’s Course of Empire in three different venues, and how curatorial choices elicit differentunderstandings of Ruscha’s work, and the function of the American landscape painting today.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Communication)--John Cabot University, Spring 2019.
Date
2019
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Edward Ruscha, Thomas Cole, Landscape painting American
Citation
Sinkler, Judith Legare. "Eliciting Meanings in Ed Ruscha’s Course of Empire: Exhibition Conditions and Reception". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2019.