Why do you think Ruscha is so revered in the art world?
Every generation seems to respond to Ed’s cool and conceptual attitude toward the world around him. He somehow finds a way to isolate an image or a piece of language that we all have rattling around in our heads but don’t know it. Then he shows it to us, and we think “Yeah, it’s true. There is that.” A painting of the streets of Los Angeles at night with the words, HONEY I HAD TO TWIST THROUGH MORE DAMN TRAFFIC overlaid on it isn’t funny because it’s a joke, but because we’ve all done it and said it.
     There’s also what I call “the cool factor” to Ed. He looks cool, dresses cool, hangs out with cool people, and he seems to epitomize Los Angeles. I’m from Los Angeles, and sometimes I ask myself whether L.A. made Ruscha cool or Ruscha made L.A. cool.

Lastly, can you talk a bit about Ruscha’s On the Road book?
It’s Ed’s homage to Kerouac’s 1957 book that became a kind of road trip bible for the Beat generation. Ed uses some of his own photographs to illustrate Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness narrative. He came in at the tail end of that generation, and like a lot of us, was influenced by the sense of freedom that the automobile and the American highway system provided. This would be like being the pioneer of the internet. The road seemed endless.

Road Tested runs from January 23-April 17 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.