In the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles, there’s a massive mural of a middle-aged man, his hands clasped together, staring down at the street below from an old tenement-style building (old by L.A. standards, anyway).
There’s a guy-girl couple walking towards the building across an intersection down the block, pausing at the curb before they cross the street at just the right spot where the eyes of man in the mural seem to focus like a laser.
“Who is that?,” the guys asks , pointing to the mural.
“Oh, that’s just one of the greatest artists of all-time,” she says, offhandedly, as they step into the street, both of them clutching iPhones and iced matcha lattes.
The mural is a portrait of artist Ed Ruscha. It was painted by Kent Twitchell and has become a landmark of the Arts District. This is fitting since Ruscha, though he grew up in Oklahoma, and though his studio is on the other side of town in Culver City, is an artist very much associated with L.A. In many respects, Ruscha is the quintessential Post-Modern L.A. artist. He’s practically a living legend who is part of the indisputable Pop Art canon.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 