Given the highly graphic nature of his work, the American artist Ed Ruscha has somehow kept his distance from the advertising world. We remember there was a towel design back a while and he did design the original format for Art Forum adverts but if you can keep a good artist out of the ad biz, you can't keep the ad biz away from a good artist. Take the banner billboard for Salt, AJ’s latest action pic. It is a clear copycat of Ruscha’s signature style. Odd that a movie set in Washington and New York reaches for the quintessential Californian desert artist. That’s not city smog you see there, no it's the endless stretch of the desert.
