Oral history interview with Edward Ruscha, 1980 October 29-1981 October 2 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Edward Ruscha on Oct. 29, 1980, March 25, July 16, and Oct. 2, 1981. The interview was conducted by Paul Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. This is a rough transcription that may include typographical errors. Interview October 29, 1980 PAUL KARLSTROM: I should mention one thing as an introduction to give some feeling for place and context. We're in your studio, which is on Western in the Hollywood area. I don't know if it's actually visible from your studio, but up there on the hill is the big Hollywood sign. I don't know if you get the credit for making it famous, but certainly your images of that sign are extremely well known. So it seems appropriate that we're doing this interview right here. You were born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska. I would like you to give us some idea of your family background, where you come from. I don't know how far you want to go back. EDWARD RUSCHA: As far back as I can remember. Let's see, my father was born in 1891 in Billings, Missouri, and his father was born also in Missouri, I think about thirty years before that, somewhere in Missouri or Illinois. I'm not sure where my grandfather was born. I think maybe my grandfather, who had a different name, I think it was Rusiska at one time. MR. KARLSTROM: What nationality is that? MR. RUSCHA: It's Bohemian/German extraction. MR KARLSTROM: So that's your ethnic background. MR RUSCHA: Yes, that's my father's background. My name was changed. I think my great-grandfather changed the name to Ruscha at some point. MR. KARLSTROM: Probably because it was easier. MR RUSCHA: Yes, and as I understand, it was changed to rhyme with the town, Chickasha, Oklahoma, where I guess someone was at that time. That's an Indian name, maybe Seminole Indian. So that's as much as I know about the origin of my father. Now my mother was born in Chicago in 1907 and her name was Dorothy Driscoll. Her father was Patrick James Driscoll, and he was born, I believe, in Washington. MR. KARLSTROM: Washington, DC? MR. RUSCHA: Washington, DC I think so. I could stand corrected on that. Anyway I knew Pat Driscoll. I knew my grandfather. And his father, which would be my great-grandfather, came from County Cork, Ireland, and their name could possibly have been O'Driscoll at one time and then shortened to Driscoll. So my mother grew up there and my mother and father met about 1935. My father was in the First World War in Camp Polk in Arkansas, and he had a desk job, I guess, so he didn't have to go into combat. He was almost twenty-eight years old, I guess. Then he had some odd jobs from time to time, and he eventually got a job with the Hartford Insurance Company. He was an insurance auditor for about twenty- five years. MR. KARLSTROM: That's how he came to Nebraska, I suppose. MR. RUSCHA: Right, and then he settled in Nebraska. I think he met my mother in Illinois somewhere. He was in Danville, Illinois, he also worked for Hartford in Danville, I remember that, around 1918, and after he got out of the war-1920. There were twelve children in his family and they lived in Springfield, Missouri on Robinson Street. The house still stands, I believe. Anyway, it's in the downtown old section, and I have a lot of photographs of them. My dad always said that they were towheads. All the kids had white hair. MR. KARLSTROM: I used to be a towhead once. MR. RUSCHA: Did you? I never was, my brother was, though. And my son used to be, he had real white hair. So they had something like three daughters and the rest of them were all sons. He was the oldest, my father, Edward, and he was like Edward II -- I'm the IV, my son is the V. MR. KARLSTROM: So there's some nobility in your family. MR. RUSCHA: There's a little nobility. So he was more or less the breadwinner, the oldest of the family, I think the oldest surviving one now might be in his sixties or so. He was born in 1891. MR. KARLSTROM: Your father's dead now. MR. RUSCHA: Yes, he died in 1959 in Oklahoma. My mother's still alive. MR KARLSTROM: Living where? MR RUSCHA: In Oklahoma City, the same house that we bought in 1941. She was just here last week; she's pretty healthy. She's seventy-three now. But my father was burdened with this responsibility of raising his brothers and sisters. My grandfather and his wife were real hard working, Teutonic class, I guess. Maybe his wife was born in Germany, but I'm not really sure. Her name was Dürer. Either she or her father was born in Germany. They had a real tough life. My grandfather had a grocery store in Springfield, and also in Billings at the time, so they stuck pretty close to home and they were real strict Catholics. They were all raised that way and naturally I got this legacy of Catholicism that I eventually had to get smart and back away from. MR. KARLSTROM: You've been fighting it ever since. MR. RUSCHA: I fought it until I was about eighteen. But anyway I remember seeing -- I have a lot of pictures that he'd taken back in Missouri, family pictures. And it was always real funny because the kids were all lined up, you know, going to mass. And then my uncle Paul, who died of leukemia around 1900 or so, was a Saturday Evening Post delivery boy. Anyway, there's a lot of rich old tradition. MR. KARLSTROM: Real Middle America. MR. RUSCHA: Real Middle America, at the same time, not Protestant Middle America; it was definitely Catholic, but from farm stock and all that. My mother had one brother who lives in Florida now, he's still alive, George Driscoll, and she had a little harder time from Pat, their father. He was always pretty hard on her, so she had a rather rough childhood when she grew up. My father had his own type of rough childhood. He had to constantly be scrubbing cabbage, they were making this German stuff all the time. I've even got photos of them. One of them is of this cabbage machine. They were always doing that. MR. KARLSTROM: Cabbage machine? MR. RUSCHA: It was a wooden setup like this and you'd just take the cabbage and rake it across like this; it's got a blade on it, and it makes all this cabbage. MR. KARLSTROM: Was he doing this just for the family? MR. RUSCHA: Oh yes; for the family. Or they were making soap, doing these archaic, traditional things, you know, to save money; someone's over in the corner darning socks. From the photos I've got, they're pretty amusing. MR. KARLSTROM: You were mentioning your mother's difficult childhood and family situation. MR. RUSCHA: Yes. My uncle George Driscoll was a boxer; he was real interested in boxing. He'd get my mother in the ring, put gloves on her, and before she could even get her gloves on -- POP! MR. KARLSTROM: That's terrible! MR. RUSCHA: And so my grandfather Pat would just sit back and laugh. And grandmother was real reserved and stoic, she'd mind her business -- traditional turn-of-the-century life style for a mother at that time. But my mother had somewhat of an interest in art, not a mercenary interest in life. My father was more rigid in his thinking, much more rigid. MR. KARLSTROM: A strong Catholic. MR. RUSCHA: Yes, right. And also he was thinking business and figures and so he had no time, really, for his children to go off and study anthropology like my sister did. I have a sister, Shelby, who is a year older, and a brother, Paul, who is five years younger than me. MR. KARLSTROM: He lives here. MR. RUSCHA: Yes. He lives right upstairs from me. So my sister went off to college in Mexico. She went on a trip down there and liked it so much she went to Mexico City College. My father was behind her the whole time, but he still wondered why she was taking anthropology and art and all this. He thought maybe she should take some classes that would help her get a job. So he was profession-oriented and strict in his ways. I always remember his being strict. And he wasn't really that "touchy" with us -- I mean he was not emotional, not demonstrative. Rarely I'd go to a baseball game with him or something. But I loved him as a father and I felt close to him. He was not around the house a lot.