Overview

Published to accompany the most comprehensive presentation of Ed Ruscha's work to date, co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), this catalogue spans 65 years of the artist's remarkable career and mirrors his own cross-disciplinary approach. Spanning 65 years of Ed Ruscha's remarkable career and mirroring his own cross-disciplinary approach, ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN features over 250 works, produced from 1958 to the present, in various mediums-including painting, drawing, prints, film, photography, artist's books, and Installation. Published to accompany the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date, and his first solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the richly illustrated publication highlights Ruscha's most acclaimed works alongside lesser-known aspects of his practice. Essays by an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine Ruscha's work under a new light, beyond the categories traditionally imposed him, to present fresh perspectives on one of the most influential figures in postwar American art. No more a painter or a bookmaker than he is a Pop or a Conceptual artist, Ruscha is a keen observer of our rapidly changing world. Featuring rarely seen paintings and works on paper made early in his career to cross-media multisensory installations, the publication captures the ceaseless reinvention that has defined Ruscha's prolific, six-decade career.

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9781633451506

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Reviews

"Ed Ruscha, intrepid explorer of language and image, prefigured a digital culture of words on the move. A retrospective at MoMA shines new light on his groundbreaking career: the books, the paintings, the room made of chocolate.--Jason Farago ""The New York Times: Arts"" The keen observations and careful execution of these paintings speak to a maniacal tendency in America toward anger, billboards that are empty of sentences but have plenty to say.--Jerry Saltz ""New York Magazine: Vulture"" The most comprehensive survey to date of the artist's six-decade career--Roberta Smith ""The New York Times: Arts"" The schemas of many of Ruscha's drawings and paintings establish his idealization of how information could be conveyed in a flash.--David Platzker ""Artforum"" Think of Ruscha's oeuvre as a bizarre, decades-long bit about failures to communicate. It's the contemporary-art equivalent to ""Who's on First?"" an extended gag in which meaning slips between words like oil running across water.--Alex Greenberger ""ARTnews"""

"As this survey shows, Ruscha grew out of the temptation to such polarizing jibing to become the finely sharpened commentator in his work that both the State of the Union and artworld, as a whole, deserve.--McGlynn Tom ""Brooklyn Rail"" Giving viewers an encounter with something that may not mean anything at all, or be a concept that is so overdetermined as to be impermeable, these are parts of art too - parts that Ruscha excels at like few others.--Veronica Esposito ""Guardian"" If you think you hate conceptual art, see this show. Chances are you hate bad conceptual art. Ruscha made drawings using gunpowder and paintings of maple syrup and beans, but few image-makers have so rarely lapsed into gimmickry, and even fewer have got such consistent laughs.--Arn Jackson ""New Yorker"" Just about everything that Mr. Ruscha has ever put his hand to is--radically and conventionally at the same time--simply very good-looking.--Peter Plagens ""Wall Street Journal"" The excellent catalog to the exhibition features a revealing cover...Could there be a more succinct introduction to Ruscha's six decades of exceptional art?--Christopher Knight ""Los Angeles Times"" There is very little in it not to like. Anyone can connect to a picture with no fixed meaning; like the dual-action exhibition title, every Ruscha is a two-way street.--Yablonsky Linda ""The Art Newspaper"" Ed Ruscha, intrepid explorer of language and image, prefigured a digital culture of words on the move. A retrospective at MoMA shines new light on his groundbreaking career: the books, the paintings, the room made of chocolate.--Jason Farago ""The New York Times: Arts"" The keen observations and careful execution of these paintings speak to a maniacal tendency in America toward anger, billboards that are empty of sentences but have plenty to say.--Jerry Saltz ""New York Magazine: Vulture"" The most comprehensive survey to date of the artist's six-decade career--Roberta Smith ""The New York Times: Arts"" The schemas of many of Ruscha's drawings and paintings establish his idealization of how information could be conveyed in a flash.--David Platzker ""Artforum"" Think of Ruscha's oeuvre as a bizarre, decades-long bit about failures to communicate. It's the contemporary-art equivalent to ""Who's on First?"" an extended gag in which meaning slips between words like oil running across water.--Alex Greenberger ""ARTnews"""

Author Information

Christophe Cherix is The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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