Art by Ed Ruscha

Ruscha's 1963 photobook Twentysix Gasoline Stations is often cited as one of the first true artist's books: 26 flat, deadpan photographs of ordinary gas stations along Route 66, presented with no commentary, treating the American road itself as a kind of readymade subject. His paintings from the same decades often feature single words or short phrases rendered in dramatic, sign-painter-style type against blank or gradient backgrounds, treating language as a purely visual object rather than a message to be read for meaning. His 1966 painting Standard Station, showing an Amarillo, Texas gas station in sharp, poster-flat perspective, has become one of the signature images of American Pop and West Coast conceptual art alike.