Opening-Day Artist Talk: Allen Ruppersberg

From collaborations with musicians like Terry Allen to his El Segundo Record Club, music has played a vital role in Allen Ruppersberg's art. A keen observer of this thread in his work is critic Greil Marcus, author of music histories including Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989) and The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs (2014). Here Marcus zeroes in on Ruppersberg's passion through Collector's Paradise, a 2012 book that traces rock history through some 1,500 recordings in the artist's collection, from Gipsy Smith's "Saved By Grace" (1909) to Al Green's "Full of Fire" (1975).

In 1978, Allen Ruppersberg offered his friends and supporters a chance to be in a novel he aimed to write: $300 would buy a “leading character,” $150 a “major character,” and so on. As the work progressed, he had the Colby poster company make posters listing the names of those who had signed up for the project, which served as gifts to his donors, coming attractions–type announcements, and works of art in their own right. The novel was never completed, but as Jan Tumlir writes in this essay from Rupperserg's The Novel That Writes Itself, "something clicked," and from this point onward the iconic Colby posters became a regular feature in his work.