LOS ANGELES — The artist Ed Ruscha has been based in Los Angeles since 1956, and has spent the better part of the last 60 years exploring that city’s iconography in a deadpan style that wavers between mundane and philosophical.

He has documented — sometimes in black and white photographs, but mostly in oil on canvas — gas stations, parking lots, swimming pools, the apartment blocks of struggling actors, the Hollywood sign (which on clear days he used to be able to see from his old studio) and, in his large body of text-based paintings, the kind of transactional language one could imagine overhearing at a power lunch at any point in the last half-century, such as: “That was then this is now,” “Honey, I twisted through more damn traffic today,” “Pay nothing until April” and the iconic “Oof.”

Aside from this city, its landmarks and their place in a kind of extreme version of Americana symbolism, the odd evolutions of contemporary vernacular have been the main through-line of his work. In person, Mr. Ruscha speaks with a vaguely unplaceable Western accent, a holdover from his upbringing — he was born in Nebraska, but grew up mostly in Oklahoma — which has softened into slight nonrecognition from his time on the West Coast. Perhaps other than John Wayne, no other postwar figure has been described as “laconic” quite as much as he has.

It’s a good word for him. Watching Mr. Ruscha enter a room feels like witnessing a cowboy suiting up for his last rodeo. His gait is stiff and slow, but also dramatically deliberate, and at 82, he’s still as handsome as a movie star.