Babycakes with Weights
Edward Ruscha
1970
Babycakes with Weights
Babycakes with Weights
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Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art ...
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Babycakes with Weights
Edward Ruscha
1970
New York: Multiples, Inc.
Unpaginated [52 pages]
19.1 × 15.2 cm
Edition of 1,200

Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art form. Ruscha’s publications of the 1960s and early 1970s were conceived as conceptual propositions, characterised by the interplay of abundant imagery, minimal captions, and the use of “text-as-image” on their covers. But, as simple as they might seem, each took Ruscha an entire year of gestation, as he confessed in an interview with Willoughby Sharp for Avalanche in 1973:


 


“When I did the books, I had a complete feeling of creation in the same sense that a woman would have a child. I even wrote that down: These books are my children.”


 


It was quite literally in this spirit that, in 1970, two years after the birth of his son, Edward “Eddie” Ruscha Jr., the artist conceived this playful celebration in book form. Produced in an edition of 1,200 copies by the Marian Goodman Gallery’s publishing arm in New York, Multiples Inc., Babycakes with Weights consists of 22 black-and-white photographs of the baby and other cookies, taken by Dana and Ed Ruscha, along with close friends. The subjects are captioned with their weights, ranging from 1 1⁄2 ounces (42 grams) to 15 lb 8 oz (4 kg), the infant being the heaviest “cookie” pictured. 


 


Unlike his other publications, more minimal and austere, the cover of Babycakes embraces all the rococo aesthetics of a baby shower invitation: a pink ribbon and the title spelled out in soft, fuzzy green flocked cut-out letters. Essentially a visual pun on the American slang term of endearment “babycake”, the book embodies Ruscha’s “non-statement” philosophy of art-making:


 


“To try to step back and explain it, that's almost like searching for bones in ice cream. Probably is not gonna happen. You just have to step back and look at things, not to think too much about what they mean.” (Ruscha in a video interview for CBS, 12 November 2023)


 


Babycakes and Dutch Details are the only artist’s books in his body of work that were not funded by Ruscha himself.

New York: Multiples, Inc.
Unpaginated [52 pages]
19.1 × 15.2 cm
Edition of 1,200

Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art form. Ruscha’s publications of the 1960s and early 1970s were conceived as conceptual propositions, characterised by the interplay of abundant imagery, minimal captions, and the use of “text-as-image” on their covers. But, as simple as they might seem, each took Ruscha an entire year of gestation, as he confessed in an interview with Willoughby Sharp for Avalanche in 1973:

 

“When I did the books, I had a complete feeling of creation in the same sense that a woman would have a child. I even wrote that down: These books are my children.”

 

It was quite literally in this spirit that, in 1970, two years after the birth of his son, Edward “Eddie” Ruscha Jr., the artist conceived this playful celebration in book form. Produced in an edition of 1,200 copies by the Marian Goodman Gallery’s publishing arm in New York, Multiples Inc., Babycakes with Weights consists of 22 black-and-white photographs of the baby and other cookies, taken by Dana and Ed Ruscha, along with close friends. The subjects are captioned with their weights, ranging from 1 1⁄2 ounces (42 grams) to 15 lb 8 oz (4 kg), the infant being the heaviest “cookie” pictured. 

 

Unlike his other publications, more minimal and austere, the cover of Babycakes embraces all the rococo aesthetics of a baby shower invitation: a pink ribbon and the title spelled out in soft, fuzzy green flocked cut-out letters. Essentially a visual pun on the American slang term of endearment “babycake”, the book embodies Ruscha’s “non-statement” philosophy of art-making:

 

“To try to step back and explain it, that's almost like searching for bones in ice cream. Probably is not gonna happen. You just have to step back and look at things, not to think too much about what they mean.” (Ruscha in a video interview for CBS, 12 November 2023)

 

Babycakes and Dutch Details are the only artist’s books in his body of work that were not funded by Ruscha himself.

DESCRIPTION

Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art form. Ruscha’s publications of the 1960s and early 1970s were conceived as conceptual propositions, characterised by the interplay of abundant imagery, minimal captions, and the use of “text-as-image” on their covers. But, as simple as they might seem, each took Ruscha an entire year of gestation, as he confessed in an interview with Willoughby Sharp for Avalanche in 1973:

 

“When I did the books, I had a complete feeling of creation in the same sense that a woman would have a child. I even wrote that down: These books are my children.”

 

It was quite literally in this spirit that, in 1970, two years after the birth of his son, Edward “Eddie” Ruscha Jr., the artist conceived this playful celebration in book form. Produced in an edition of 1,200 copies by the Marian Goodman Gallery’s publishing arm in New York, Multiples Inc., Babycakes with Weights consists of 22 black-and-white photographs of the baby and other cookies, taken by Dana and Ed Ruscha, along with close friends. The subjects are captioned with their weights, ranging from 1 1⁄2 ounces (42 grams) to 15 lb 8 oz (4 kg), the infant being the heaviest “cookie” pictured. 

 

Unlike his other publications, more minimal and austere, the cover of Babycakes embraces all the rococo aesthetics of a baby shower invitation: a pink ribbon and the title spelled out in soft, fuzzy green flocked cut-out letters. Essentially a visual pun on the American slang term of endearment “babycake”, the book embodies Ruscha’s “non-statement” philosophy of art-making:

 

“To try to step back and explain it, that's almost like searching for bones in ice cream. Probably is not gonna happen. You just have to step back and look at things, not to think too much about what they mean.” (Ruscha in a video interview for CBS, 12 November 2023)

 

Babycakes and Dutch Details are the only artist’s books in his body of work that were not funded by Ruscha himself.

New York: Multiples, Inc.
Unpaginated [52 pages]
19.1 × 15.2 cm
Edition of 1,200

Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art form. Ruscha’s publications of the 1960s and early 1970s were conceived as conceptual propositions, characterised by the interplay of abundant imagery, minimal captions, and the use of “text-as-image” on their covers. But, as simple as they might seem, each took Ruscha an entire year of gestation, as he confessed in an interview with Willoughby Sharp for Avalanche in 1973:

 

“When I did the books, I had a complete feeling of creation in the same sense that a woman would have a child. I even wrote that down: These books are my children.”

 

It was quite literally in this spirit that, in 1970, two years after the birth of his son, Edward “Eddie” Ruscha Jr., the artist conceived this playful celebration in book form. Produced in an edition of 1,200 copies by the Marian Goodman Gallery’s publishing arm in New York, Multiples Inc., Babycakes with Weights consists of 22 black-and-white photographs of the baby and other cookies, taken by Dana and Ed Ruscha, along with close friends. The subjects are captioned with their weights, ranging from 1 1⁄2 ounces (42 grams) to 15 lb 8 oz (4 kg), the infant being the heaviest “cookie” pictured. 

 

Unlike his other publications, more minimal and austere, the cover of Babycakes embraces all the rococo aesthetics of a baby shower invitation: a pink ribbon and the title spelled out in soft, fuzzy green flocked cut-out letters. Essentially a visual pun on the American slang term of endearment “babycake”, the book embodies Ruscha’s “non-statement” philosophy of art-making:

 

“To try to step back and explain it, that's almost like searching for bones in ice cream. Probably is not gonna happen. You just have to step back and look at things, not to think too much about what they mean.” (Ruscha in a video interview for CBS, 12 November 2023)

 

Babycakes and Dutch Details are the only artist’s books in his body of work that were not funded by Ruscha himself.

MORE BOOKS

Much has been written about Ed Ruscha’s publications. Milestones in the history of postmodern artists’ books, they marked a decisive shift towards industrial offset printing and helped establish the artist’s book as an inexpensive art form. Ruscha’s publications of the 1960s and early 1970s were conceived as conceptual propositions, characterised by the interplay of abundant imagery, minimal captions, and the use of “text-as-image” on their covers. But, as simple as they might seem, each took Ruscha an entire year of gestation, as he confessed in an interview with Willoughby Sharp for Avalanche in 1973:

 

“When I did the books, I had a complete feeling of creation in the same sense that a woman would have a child. I even wrote that down: These books are my children.”

 

It was quite literally in this spirit that, in 1970, two years after the birth of his son, Edward “Eddie” Ruscha Jr., the artist conceived this playful celebration in book form. Produced in an edition of 1,200 copies by the Marian Goodman Gallery’s publishing arm in New York, Multiples Inc., Babycakes with Weights consists of 22 black-and-white photographs of the baby and other cookies, taken by Dana and Ed Ruscha, along with close friends. The subjects are captioned with their weights, ranging from 1 1⁄2 ounces (42 grams) to 15 lb 8 oz (4 kg), the infant being the heaviest “cookie” pictured. 

 

Unlike his other publications, more minimal and austere, the cover of Babycakes embraces all the rococo aesthetics of a baby shower invitation: a pink ribbon and the title spelled out in soft, fuzzy green flocked cut-out letters. Essentially a visual pun on the American slang term of endearment “babycake”, the book embodies Ruscha’s “non-statement” philosophy of art-making:

 

“To try to step back and explain it, that's almost like searching for bones in ice cream. Probably is not gonna happen. You just have to step back and look at things, not to think too much about what they mean.” (Ruscha in a video interview for CBS, 12 November 2023)

 

Babycakes and Dutch Details are the only artist’s books in his body of work that were not funded by Ruscha himself.

MORE BOOKS