A New Book Examines Peter Shire’s Legacy

Peter Shire: Towers with Ranch Dressing evaluates the ways in which towers have influenced the artist’s work as signifiers of “nostalgia, joy, memory, and anxiety.” 

By: Leilah Stone

Perhaps best known for his involvement with Ettore Sottsass and his Italian design and architecture group Memphis at the height of Postmodernism, Los Angeles native Peter Shire remains an iconic figure whose playful attitude and radical irreverence continue to push boundaries while subverting ideas of taste and defining California culture and design. 

Although a handful of books on Shire’s work—particularly his ceramic teapots—exist, an unprecedented volume, Peter Shire: Towers with Ranch Dressing, takes a deep dive into the artist’s fascination with tall buildings as a symbol of his life and work in L.A. “Los Angeles began as a pueblo surrounded by land grants—or ranchos—from the king of Spain,” Shire says, explaining the book’s title. “There still remains an aspect of the rancho system—land which sometimes translates into real estate and has made a goofy mess of pop culture crossed with avarice, confused aesthetics and objectives in building and style. What could make for more of a goopy mess than ranch dressing?” 

With an introduction by the artist and original essays and contributions from Andrew Berardini, Anna Katz, Bobby Klein, Jim Heimann, Aaron Rose, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the book is oversaturated with sketches and drawings, images of Shire’s public sculptures in and around L.A., tall towerlike teapots, and archival photography of various towers sprinkled throughout the Southern California landscape. 

“I adore towers. They are giant jungle gyms for adults, always attracting my attention, whether I’m walking, driving, or flying,” Shire says. “Towers to the max.”