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.
The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere.
Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.
I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little piece perfect.
I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.
I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered.
I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.
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