In 1964 Edward Joseph Ruscha IV — also known as Ed Ruscha, master of the evasive(1) — painted his second large-scale iteration of a Standard gasoline station, titling this version
Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half.
In the newer work — following
Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963 — Ruscha reimagined the Standard Station in Amarillo, Texas, he photographed along Route 66 from his first artist's book
Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, reversed left to right and with a few details streamlined and others subtlety altered to add clarity to the composition. Most significantly, gone from the 1964 painting are the three searchlights Ruscha had added to the 1963 work, which mimicked similar lights he painted within
Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962.
Now floating high above the horizon in a dramatically lit sky, near the top right corner in the 1964 painting is a rendering of the October 1946 issue of the pulp magazine
Popular Western, a periodical of “complete quick-trigger stories.” Hovering trompe-l'œil like, torn horizontally at the spine, rotated clockwise 90 degrees off vertical, the magazine a seeming non sequitur begs questioning — what’s this thing here?
In one reading the Standard Station and the pulp magazine, published by Better Publications of New York City, mark the collision of two territories. In this scenario, Ruscha’s gasoline station with its pumps and gas hoses reflects a modern-day corral, lassoing and wrangling cars passing through dusty towns and cities as saloons with rails and water troughs once did for roving cowboys and their horses.
On page 96 of that issue of
Popular Western, in the top left corner of the page, there’s a small boxed advertisement alongside a cartoon of a sultry-clad woman. The body of the advert reads:
DRAW for MONEY
Be An ARTIST!
PREPARE TODAY FOR THE FUTURE THAT LIES AHEAD.
The text continues “It’s pleasant and interesting to study Art the W.S.A. [Washington School of Art](2) way. … our practical home study method well-known since 1914. Write today for information in FREE BOOK “ART FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT” – tells all about our course, material furnished, instruction service and commercial opportunities for you in art.
Not long after the issue of
Popular Western was released a photograph of Ruscha was taken in 1951 of the artist as a young man, wearing a paperboy’s t-shirt, a grinning, mischievous look on his face directed towards the camera. With pen in hand, Ruscha is seen drawing a caricature of a big-eyed cartoon character hawking a newspaper, with his
Oklahoman Times newspaper delivery bag sitting on the desk — the image attesting to both his early draftsman’s skill and budding entrepreneurship.
While it’s unclear which correspondence course Ruscha took, and where he found out about it,(3) it likely was a course that operated similarly to that of Washington School of Art exploiting slow, incremental learning, with reinforcing encouraging guidance to ensure the continued flow of work–and ongoing payment of course fees–back to the school. These classes were designed to standardize skills, develop professionalism, and tamp out offensive tendencies — namely abstraction and unstructured creativity. The apt pupil would thus–if they ever reached the end of the numerous weeks of courses–terminate with a portfolio mushrooming complete with homogeneous design product to show to potential employers looking for a production artist or layout designer.
In a 1956 photograph, taken shortly before his westward drive with Mason Williams following their high school graduation, we see Ruscha — in a suit with a carnation on his lapel — shaking hands with a member of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce as he is awarded first prize in graphic design. Two young men, his runner-ups, standing to Ruscha’s right, one with a smile, the other at far right — the future journalist, Jack Taylor — glaring back towards Ruscha. Ruscha’s expression is hard to characterize, imaginably a half smile, contrasting with the large broad smile of the awarder. Rotated on its side, held by his left hand, is Ruscha’s winning design, a very modern composition with title lettering, IN MEMORY OF NATIONAL PRINTING, at the top. The square board is then sequentially underlined by a progressively smaller series of horizontal dots that unfold downwards. It’s the very sort of clean, rational, “good design” that was being taught in the 1950s by the Washington School of Art, Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, which had Ruscha hoped to attend; and even in its unique way Chouinard Art Institute, also in Los Angeles, where he enrolled later in 1956.
Good design is at its heart a clear conveyance of information. Something to garner attention, hold the eye for a period of time and leave the viewer with a memorable, hopefully lasting, iconographic.
Twentysix Gasoline Stations — which Ruscha self-published under the pseudonym
National Excelsior — was a proof-of-concept project that tested Ruscha’s design skills, production values, and the integrity of his artistic ideal. Well-tuned purposeful work with preconceived intent and a lingering hint of mischief.
Footnotes
(1) Quoted from the introduction to the catalogue
Joe Goode / Edward Ruscha, published in conjunction with show held at Newport Harbor, Balboa Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, CA, 1968. Full quote reads:
"I felt right proud when my son, Edward, and friend Joe asked me to write an introduction to the catalogue. I must confess I've never been able to pin either one down long enough to have the true meaning of their art explained. They are masters of the evasive. If no more, this much is certain: these young artists are trail-blazing pioneers of their own thing." Much obliged, Dorothy Ruscha, Oklahoma City
(2) The Washington School of Art was one of many correspondence schools that flourished with advertisements placed in the back of magazines such as
Boys’ Life and
Popular Mechanics when Ruscha was an adolescent. Some of these schools continue today. See Steven Heller’s essay
Steven Heller, Draw Me Schools Of Commercial Art.
(3) “It was a correspondence course and I don't think I ever finished it. The skittish nature of growing up, and being in high school and kind of waking up. I maybe got interested in this course to begin with and then maybe I dropped out of it. I think I did drop out of it but it wasn't the draw me and win an art scholarship. It was another American cartoonist course or some cartoon course. I probably got this from a magazine.” Ruscha to author, September 10, 2019.
