The bright aquamarine of a swimming pool is ubiquitous in images of the Olympics. Private swimming pools have also been synonymous with a Southern California lifestyle since the years following World War II, when cheap mortgages fueled demand for single-family homes in the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles and hotels with amenities like pools beckoned vacationers.

Ed Ruscha moved from Nebraska to Los Angeles in 1956. He has spent most of his artistic career experimenting with the visual language of commercial printmaking, photography, and graphic design that shaped the city’s image as what he calls “the ultimate cardboard cutout town.” In 1962 he published a paperback called Twentysix Gasoline Stations. This linear sequence of photo images enclosed in a book was cheap, small, and mass-produced, and the style of the photography was deliberately bland.

Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, like Twentysix Gasoline Stations, is meant to be similar to commercial publications. “I am not trying to create a precious limited-edition book, but a mass-produced product of high order,” Ruscha has said. He used commercial techniques and printed in large editions to make this form of art inexpensive and available to a large number of people. In Ruscha’s books we can see his ability to interpret the sprawl of Los Angeles, evoking presence and absence through photographic repetition. It is fitting that the sequence of images in these books is reminiscent of cinematic film.

Edward Ruscha (born 1937), Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass. Ten photolithographs of photographs in color on coated white paper, 1976. 7 x 5 1/2 x 1/4 in. (17.8 x 14.0 x 0.7 cm). Gift of Molly and Walter Bareiss, 1984.954. Not on view.*