The buildings, billboards, and logos of Ed Ruscha’s 20th-century paintings don’t look like those that populate the world today. His were the product of a sparser, still-developing American West, before roads and cities were choked with cars and people and seemingly every facade was covered in the promotional copy of an overcrowded corporate landscape. Just imagine, for instance, a gas station with displays advertising… gas. Not energy drinks and e-cigarettes and Kit Kats and scratch-offs; just gas. 

That’s exactly what’s depicted in Ruscha’s 1964 painting, Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half. It may seem quaint, but there’s something about this scene—and the artist’s subtle, perspective-shifting inclusion of a dime-store magazine floating in the upper right corner—that resonates in today’s ad-saturated America. In this painting, Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott recently wrote, “we get a perfect juxtaposition of two ideas: power and majesty occupying most of the space, then fiction and lies besmirching or staining it in the far upper-right-hand corner.” 

Ed Ruscha. Photo: Sten Rosenlund. Courtesy of MoMA.

Fittingly, Standard Station is the image that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has chosen to feature in the promotional materials for its major “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” show, organized in close collaboration with the now 86-year-old artist. With more than 200 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and books, it is the most comprehensive retrospective of his work ever staged.  

The magnitude of the moment has not been lost on critics, many of whom have reached for the kind of superlatives not often seen in reviews these days. “To call it the show of the season is something of an understatement,” wrote Jason Farago of the New York Times.  

Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.

Even the critics who identified weaknesses in the MoMA presentation—some found sections of it, particularly those filled with Ruscha’s later work, inconsistent—were undeterred in their awe of Ruscha and his broader achievements. “If ‘Now Then’ strikes the same notes a few too many times for so inventive an artist,” wrote Linda Yablonsky for the Art Newspaper, “ultimately 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.” 

Indeed, just about everyone seems to agree: the retrospective is a fitting swan song for a generationally important artist and it should not be missed. See more images from the show below. 

Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.

Ed Ruscha, Actual Size (1962). © 2023 Edward Ruscha. Courtesy of Museum Associates/LACMA.

Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at the Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.

Installation view of “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN,” on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. Courtesy of MoMA.

“ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” is on view now through January 13, 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

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