Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Reconsider: Palm Trees Found

From an early stage in planning our intervention, Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) was identified as a potential work to add to the exhibition’s landscape painting galleries. Every Building, a small object in book form, unfolds into a 25 foot long accordion with two continuous horizontal bands of photographs depicting both sides of the Sunset Strip. Every Building is one of many artist books Ruscha created during the 1960s and early 70s that have subsequently been identified as significant across multiple historical categories: pop art, conceptual art, artist books, post-war photography and theories of postmodernism being a few. The USC Architecture and Fine Arts Library has many of Ruscha’s books in its collection (including two copies of Every Building), but (of course?) they are now held in the libraries rare books section.


While doing research on Every Building and other books by Ruscha I noticed that A Few Palm Trees (1971), the last book Ruscha published in this period, was listed as “missing” at the AFA library (concerning), however another copy was available at Leavey, a general reference library at the university. I thought this seemed peculiar and possibly just a typo on the library’s website, but to be thorough I decided to investigate.



Leavey Library, 4th Floor, section Q, bottom shelf on the far left, call number QK495.P17R87 1971: (to my surprise!) a small book with a glossy solid black cover, only exhibiting minor ware. Inside: 15 black and white photographed palm trees of many varieties floating on solid white pages. The palms, methodically removed from their original photographs—isolated from their urban context—are all printed on the right side. The left pages list the Los Angeles street address of each tree: 6675 Franklin Ave., 5529 W. Sunset Blvd., S.W. corner of McCadden Pl. & Yucca St., and so on. While A Few Palm Trees is not unique among Ruscha’s books for its deadpan interplay between image and information (being the address), what is interesting is that Ruscha cuts the book’s subject from photographs of the greater environment, and that Ruscha is investigating something natural (sort of—palm trees aren’t actually native to Los Angeles) within the built environment, verse the build environment itself.



But best of all about this discovery: it was filed in the horticulture reference section and I was able to check it out!an absolutely wondrous mistake by the library. Art historian Douglas Crimp similarly encountered a miscataloging of a Ruscha book (Twentysix Gasoline Stations was filed in transportation) at the New York Public Library, which he discussed in an 1981 essay, "The Museum's Old, the Library's New Subject." Concluding his essay on photography’s assimilation into the museum and the category of “Art,” Crimp contends that considering these incidents of miscataloging is fundamental to understanding the books: “I now know that Ed Ruscha’s books make no sense in relation to the categories of art according to which art books have been cataloged in the library, and that is part of their achievement. The fact that there is nowhere within the present system of classification a place for Twentysix Gasoline Stations is an index of its radicalism with respect to established modes of thought.”

And to be honest, I am somewhat surprised, as well as delighted, that the books are still ill suited for such classification. Since Crimp wrote his essay in 1981, theories of postmodernism, the photographic image and institutional critique have been widely discussed outside, as well as within, the museum; Ruscha’s books have been included in numerous museum exhibitions as precious works of art (recently a number were added to LACMA’s recreation of the New Topographics exhibition); and works by Ruscha, including the books, have become highly prized, as well as priced, objects of collection. That A Few Palm Trees was not identified as an art book today—that it somehow slipped through the cracks—is wondrous; indeed, a sign of its “radicalism” as an object.

Of course, by writing this, I am calling attention to the book’s misplacement, and it will most likely be re-catalogued as an art book. While I relish the idea of another person discovering the book (who was there prior to me?!), it should probably be protected as a rare book as one is already missing from the university’s collections. However, before its uneasy transition to being a full-time art object, it will be shown in our intervention exhibition, alongside Every Building on the Sunset Strip and another Ruscha book, Thirtyfour Los Angeles Parking Lots (1967). Until our show opens, it will remain a lost artist book, or possibly a bizarre plant reference book on Los Angeles palm trees and their mailing addresses.

-David Evans Frantz


Douglas Crimp, “The Museum’s Old / The Library’s New Subject,” originally printed in Parachute 22, Spring 1981; reprinted in On the Museum’s Ruins (1993) and The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (1989), as well as other anthologies on photography and postmodernism.

2 comments:

  1. I can't believe it was filed in the horticulture reference section, and I love the Crimp quote about Ruscha's work: "The fact that there is nowhere within the present system of classification . . . is an index of its radicalism with respect to established modes of thought.” Brilliant post!

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  2. It surprises my that a Few Palm Trees was not identified as an art book ... What kind of "art" do they want then ???

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