Write-on man

CALIFORNIA'S biggest urban sprawl is often described as a city of movement rather than monuments, one defined by car culture rather than great architecture or beauty, but Edward Ruscha has found it a source of inspiration for more than 40 years. “Monet had the Seine, I had Route 66,” he says of the interstate highway that led him west from an Oklahoma boyhood to art school in Los Angeles in the late 1950s and whose roadside imagery appears in much of his work. At the time, he seemed to be heading away from the rest of the American art world; the New York school and abstract painting were then at their height. But Mr Ruscha (pronounced Rooshay) felt he had nothing to add to Abstract Expressionism and studied graphic art at a school sponsored by Disney. “It was an enormous freedom to be pre-meditated about my art.”