Ed Ruscha: Course of Empire, the National Gallery

Few have made their mark on the way we see the American cultural landscape like Ed Ruscha.

The artist, once a pioneer of the Pop Art movement, now brings his contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale to the National Gallery. Exploring the theme of 'progress, or the course of progress,' Ruscha’s Biennale installation references English-born American painter Thomas Cole’s famous painting cycle of 1833–36,The Course of Empire.

Unlike Cole’s grandiose vision of the rise and fall of a classical civilisation, Ruscha’s Course of Empire focuses on the industrial buildings of Los Angeles – simple, box-like, utilitarian structures with no pretension to beauty but redolent of economic might and global reach.

Indeed, Course of Empire is Ruscha’s striking response to the Biennale’s theme of civilisational progress. Displayed simultaneously with Thomas Cole’s famous painting cycle of 1833–36 in the Ground Floor Galleries, its monolithic and almost primeval structures offer a very different approach to the cyclical nature of civilisation.

Don’t miss Ruscha’s return to the gallery, which marks the first time that his series has been re-united since its initial presentation.