Thursday, Nov. 10. 6 p.m. Carpenter Center. Free.

“Clarence Jones, 1904-1987,” reads a gravestone-like inscription superimposed upon a rugged mountain landscape in one of Ed Ruscha’s recent paintings, “Really knew how to sharpen knives.” The dry wit, irony, and originality that pervade such a painting should also be on display in Ruscha’s upcoming Harvard lecture, which he will deliver at the Carpenter Center next Thursday.

Born in Omaha, Neb. in 1937, Ruscha is commonly characterized as a member of the Pop Art movement, though his work—which includes paintings, prints, and photographic books—defies categorization. Most notably, Ruscha has sought to explore the place of language in visual art in paintings like “Standard Station,” perhaps his most famous, and another in which dark clouds loom behind the words “SAFE AND EFFECTIVE MEDICATION.”

“Ruscha’s work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confront us daily,” writes the Carpenter Center in their online description of the event. And whether such sweeping praise is true or whether Ruscha just really knows how to sharpen knives, the lecture promises to be interesting.

—Marianne F. Kaletzky