Steidlville

This is a book about the things I like to look at in-and-around my house. Things I like to study from day to day in an attempt to figure out why I am attracted to them; and just what about them has me wanting to be their caretaker? They have become creatures in my personal zoo.
Paul Ruscha’s home is a museum to the compulsions of collecting. Since early childhood he has been incapable of discarding anything and has built a collection out of everything from appliances to corporate detritus: typewriters, toasters, hair dryers, cameras, cocktail shakers, coffee makers, old ink pens, baseball caps, odd pieces of wood, and press-apply stickers which adorn every inch of the cabinets in his overcrowded kitchen. One of the oldest collections is the numbered paper inspection slips that began appearing in the pockets of new items of clothing.
This book is an incomplete and imprecise inventory of Paul Ruscha’s collection, a collection that also includes significant paintings, sculpture and objects accumulated over the years. It also includes texts by Ruscha
explicating the nature of his attachment to the various elements of his collection, as well as reminiscences on the artists whose work he has been collecting.