Ed Ruscha Now Then: A Retrospective Book

Spanning sixty-five years of Ed Ruscha’s remarkable career and mirroring his own cross-disciplinary approach, Ed Ruscha / Now Then features more than 200 artworks produced from 1958 to the present, in genres including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, film, 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—this richly illustrated catalogue celebrates Ruscha’s most acclaimed paintings and books alongside lesser-known aspects of his practice. In these pages, an interdisciplinary group of contributors examines Ruscha’s production under a new light, beyond the categories of Pop and Conceptual art with which he has traditionally been associated, to present fresh perspectives on one of the most influential figures in postwar American art. Taken together, these essays underscore Ruscha’s singular contributions, including his material exploration of language, his experiments with unconventional mediums—such as gunpowder, chocolate, and chewing tobacco—and his groundbreaking self-published books. Supplemented by an illustrated chronology, Now Then captures the ceaseless reinvention that has long defined Ruscha’s prolific art making, now in its seventh decade. 336 pp. plus 3 gatefolds; 374 illus.