Mark Krotov and Thomas de Monchaux at n+1:
DE MONCHAUX: In the mid-1960s, Ed Ruscha and his close friend, the Canadian-turned-Californian architect Frank Gehry, used to hang out at the fashionable clubs and bars on the Sunset Strip. One of the many documentary materials that the MoMA survey directs you to on your phone is a quick interview with the latter about the former. “It was the highlight of Hollywood nightlife,” says Gehry of the Strip. “Ed was curious to document it, and he made a book about it. It’s very cool the way he represented it. There was no emotion about what goes on in there. It was just, look at the Hollywood strip, the Sunset Strip. There it is. It’s a bunch of stupid buildings. . . . We all got copies. I still have that in my library somewhere.” Every Building on the Sunset Strip, a 1966 pamphlet, was initially self-published in an edition of one thousand. It folds out, accordion-style, from a trim size of 7×5 5/8 inches x 3/8 inches thick to a satisfying length of 24 feet, 11 1/2 inch when open. Along the top of the pages runs in black and white a continuous horizontal panorama of all the buildings on the north side of the two and a half miles of the Strip. Along the bottom of the pages runs in black and white a continuous horizontal panorama of all the buildings on its south side. “I felt like [Sunset Boulevard] should be recorded with no prejudice, with no agenda, and no moral,” says 2023 Ed Ruscha, in MoMA material also available on your phone.
more here.