Tourists and surfers strolling down the Santa Monica pier in 1979 would have passed a mysterious awning advertising “The Natural Museum of Modern Art”. A nearby explanatory panel did little to clarify: “The Natural Museum of Modern Art project is part of an ongoing interest by the John Doe Co in natural objects and phenomena.”
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In the cultural history of Los Angeles, it’s an indelible scene: the 19-year-old Edward Ruscha and his friend, the musician Mason Williams, tearing down Route 66 in a customised Ford from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. Ruscha’s arrival in 1956 in the still-young city and his excitement at its signs and buildings, its colours and its surfaces, inflected most of his art over the coming decades. Even if his enthusiasm is sometimes tempered by unease, or a wry quizzicality, Ruscha is generally considered the artist-laureate of Los Angeles.
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Jonathan Griffin 