Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea that an artist's work is an accumulation of their past experiences and thoughts, rather than dramatic changes in style.
Edward Ruscha suggests that his artistic journey has been shaped significantly by the experiences and ideas he held at a young age, emphasizing a method of revisiting and reinterpreting earlier concepts. He describes his approach to art as a 'waste retrieval method,' implying that he sees value in past disgust or discarded notions, and integrates them into his current work, presenting his art as a continuous narrative that evolves over time rather than radically transforming.
In practice
During an art lecture on the evolution of modern art, this quote serves to illustrate how artists often build on past ideas.
People try to pigeonhole comics by saying they're just for kids. So is The Odyssey. So is the Labors of Hercules, the story of Fa Mulan. The advantage of those stories over the contemporary ones is that they've had 2,000 years of editing. All the crap has been weeded out over time.
I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.
If photographers are responsible for creating or reflecting an image of women in society, then, I must say, there is only one way for the future, and this is to define women as strong and independent. This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection.
As a musician and a songwriter it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.
It's the imperfections that make something beautiful, that's what makes it different and unique from everything else.
I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.
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