Departures is KCET's hyper-local web documentary, community engagement tool and digital literacy program about the cultural history of Los Angeles' neighborhoods.

ED RUSCHA - Artist

Ed Ruscha - Artist
Ed Ruscha - Artist
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1/3: Wanderlust
2/3: On The Edge of Society
3/3: On Billy Al Bengston

The ideals of the post-war years were tested in Los Angeles and over a period of ten years, the city built an urban infrastructure found nowhere else in America. L.A.'s freeway system, modern architecture, city planning, popular culture and art was a template for the future. This new environment - a landscape of signs - is what artist Ed Ruscha found when he drove west, at 19 from Oklahoma City. But Ruscha soon realized that behind this fascination with the future lay an underlying tension and contradiction that needed to be chiseled down, word by word, image by image. And so, for the last 50 years, Ruscha's work and study of America's urban landscape has garnered him a reputation as one of the country's preeminent modern artists.

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Support for the Departures' Venice installment is provided through these sponsors and local community partners, as well as from viewers like you.

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