Ed Ruscha (b. 1937)

"There's no way of finding out why something interests me and it's better not to know. It can be nothing more than the shape of a thing. A good example of this would be the gearshift knob on an old car that I had. The fact that it was a globe, rather than an odd shape, seemed to have meaning for me. It was also functional, and easy to hold on to, and I liked the way you grabbed it like a globe, rather than a stick. Like most people, I operate on an automatic mode, and everything is an involuntary reflex. Logic flies out of the window when you're making a picture, at least it does with me. And thank God that it does.” – Ed Ruscha