»I don’t have any Seine River like Monet,« Ed Ruscha once said. »I’ve just got US 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles.« Nevertheless, the artist (*1937) cannot complain about a lack of inspiration: life in Los Angeles and the landscape of Southern California shape his work, which spans more than six decades. At the same time, Ruscha is considered a particularly versatile artist who is constantly reinventing himself. His oeuvre encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, film, installations, and artists' books, whereby the Pop Art artist repeatedly incorporated other art movements such as Surrealism or Photorealist painting into his work. His experimental paintings from the 1970s, for example, for which he used raw eggs, various sauces, gunpowder, or blood, among other things, caused a sensation. New York's Museum of Modern Art opens the exhibition Ed Ruscha / Now Then on September 10, which, with more than 200 exhibits, attempts to depict not only the best-known of Ruscha's works, but his entire oeuvre. Visitors can enjoy this special insight until January 13, 2024.
The title of the exhibition refers to the photo book Then & Now, which Ruscha published in 2003. In 1973, the artist documented all the buildings on Hollywood Boulevard; 30 years later, he photographed the street again using the same equipment. The juxtaposition of the photographs in the photo book is a document of the development of one of Los Angeles' most famous streets − and a project by Ruscha that shows how long-term planning and patience can also become part of a work of art.
