Born in 1937, Ruscha drove to California from Oklahoma in 1956. His trip roughly followed the legendary Route 66 through the Southwest, and all its billboards, gas stations, and open skies later defined his signature style. Ruscha studied with Robert Irwin at the Chouinard Art Institute, and became an active member of the Los Angeles Pop Art movement during the 1960s. Working in painting, photography, film, printmaking, publishing, and drawing, Ruscha honed his offbeat, humorous approach to subject matter.
What is Ruscha trying to say with all these buildings, roadways, and parking lots? This seemingly expressionless representation of the world around him could make the viewer ask, “Why is it art?” Ruscha’s style might initially seem void of aesthetic meaning given that his conceptualism is, in some sense, baffling and confrontational. Though Ruscha seems to avoid narrative and emotion, what at first seems reductive becomes more meaningful when we consider that the artist’s craft and identity has been, for the most part, removed. The viewer is left to regard these scenes as a simple flat surface — perhaps the same kind of “flattening” Ruscha experienced with the fatigue of a long road trip through the solitude of the Western desert.