By taking Kerouac’s phrase out of its context, “IN CALIFORNIA YOU CHEW THE JUICE OUT OF GRAPES AND SPIT AWAY THE SKIN AWAY, A REAL LUXURY,” and setting it against a somber grey ground, Ruscha stands suspicious of Kerouc’s starry-eyed discovery of the California way of life. Instead of emphasizing the joy of simple pleasures, “a real luxury” takes on a sarcastic tone. Anchoring the phrase atop the white arrow of the mountain, Ruscha draws our attention to this bottom line (and the palindrome “UXU”). The simple pleasure of eating just-picked grapes is undeniable—a literal “real” luxury—but this painting uses Kerouac’s own words against him. With the sweeping generalization, “in California,” the painting captures all the naiveté of a tourist seeing the state for the first time, the ironic mocking thereof, and the dialectic between the two that emerged in Ruscha’s work over the decades since he first moved to California. Ed Ruscha knows better than awe-struck Jack Kerouac.