Twentysix Gasoline Stations
Encyclopedia
Twentysix Gasoline Stations is the first artist's book by the American pop
artist Ed Ruscha. Published in April 1963 on his own imprint National Excelsior Press, it is often considered to be the first modern Artist's book, and has become famous as a precursor and a major influence on the emerging artist's book culture, especially in America. The book does exactly what its title suggests, reproducing 26 photographs of gasoline stations next to captions indicating their brand and location. From the first service station, 'Bob's Service' in Los Angeles
where Ruscha lived, the book follows a journey back to Oklahoma City
where the artist had grown up, and where his mother still resided. The last image is of a Fina
Gasoline Station in Groom
, Texas
, which Ruscha has suggested should be seen as the beginning of the return journey, 'like a coda'.
Originally printed in a numbered edition of 400, a second edition of 500 was published in 1967 and a third of 3000 in 1969. Neither of these later editions was numbered. It has been suggested that these reprints were a deliberate attempt to flood the market in order to maintain the book's status as a cheap, mass produced commodity. The book originally sold for $3.50. Of the work, Johanna Drucker
said:
.
Ruscha had visited Europe in 1961, and been particularly taken by the books he saw for sale 'on the street, in those little bookstalls,' and been impressed by the 'non-commercial look... a strange kind of sober design including the typography and the binding and everything.' Back in Los Angeles, he conceived the idea initially as a play on words, deciding upon the title first, then working on the typography and design before taking the photographs. He took about 60 photographs, and edited them down to 26 by removing any that he felt were too interesting.
Dated 1962 in the foreword and dedicated to Patty Callahan, the book comprises twenty-six photographs of various dimensions and proportions; most are laid out on a single page with the text facing the image; some go across the double spread, a few are placed next to each other. Three images are taken at night, including one of Tucumcari, New Mexico
, that appears to have been taken from a moving car. But for three people walking across the forecourt on the Sunset Strip
, a man getting out of his car at Flagstaff, Arizona
and a man looking under his hood at Lipton
, Arizona
, there are no people present. There are no cars visible in some of the photos. Almost all of the photos are taken from the other side of the highway.
All of the gasoline stations are on Route 66
, a road that had already been mythologized by the TV series Route 66
and in Steinbeck's
The Grapes Of Wrath
, and later reappeared as a motif in Dennis Hopper's
Easy Rider
. The order that the stations appear is almost the same as their position on the route west-east, with five stations moved out of order. With the exception of the last station in Groom, Texas, the relevant states listed are all in order.
The first edition was numbered and occasionally signed, which Ruscha later admitted was a 'mistake'. Apart from this detail, the books are defined by their 'professional polish, a clear-cut machine finish.'
Later, in an interview in the National Observer, Ruscha declared;
The book is covered with a semi-transparent glassine
dust jacket for protection. About fifty copies of the first edition came in a black cardboard slipcase. Apart from this, and the numbering on the last page of the first edition, each of the three editions is basically identical; but for the details of each edition at the beginning of the book, the three are indistinguishable.
, traditionally the staging posts between Pilate's condemnation and the burial of Christ after His crucifixion
on Calvary
. Ruscha, a lapsed catholic, has gone some way to supporting this view in interviews:
The book has also been cited as an artist's book equivalent of a road movie, and as a pop version of Walker Evans
' photos of America, such as his deserted gasoline station in 'Highway Corner Reedsville West Virginia, 1935'. (Although Ruscha has admitted knowledge of Evans' work, he has dismissed it as an influence.) The last image, of a Fina station, has been interpreted as a Duchampian
pun on Fin (end).
, Los Angeles-which also represented Andy Warhol
- the book was rejected by the Library of Congress for its 'unorthodox form and supposed lack of information'. The book gradually acquired cult status through the sixties, and by the eighties was often being hailed as the first modern artist's book although in fact Dieter Roth's
artist's books share the same mass produced aesthetic and investigate the nature of books with at least as much formal vigour, and predate Ruscha's first publication by 7 years. Additionally, Warja Lavater's
first book, William Tell (New York : Junior Council, Museum of Modern Art
, 1962 (OCLC ), an accordion folded book written using symbols only, preceded Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations.
An original signed copy of Twentysix Gasoline Stations is now worth up to $35,000.
Copies are kept in public collections across the world, including MOMA
, V&A, Tate
, and the National Gallery of Australia
.
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
artist Ed Ruscha. Published in April 1963 on his own imprint National Excelsior Press, it is often considered to be the first modern Artist's book, and has become famous as a precursor and a major influence on the emerging artist's book culture, especially in America. The book does exactly what its title suggests, reproducing 26 photographs of gasoline stations next to captions indicating their brand and location. From the first service station, 'Bob's Service' in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
where Ruscha lived, the book follows a journey back to Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...
where the artist had grown up, and where his mother still resided. The last image is of a Fina
Petrofina
Petrofina was a Belgian oil company which merged with Total in 1999 to form TotalFina, but the name has now been changed back to Total after another merger...
Gasoline Station in Groom
Groom, Texas
Groom is a town in Carson County, Texas, United States. The population was 587 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Amarillo, Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, which Ruscha has suggested should be seen as the beginning of the return journey, 'like a coda'.
Originally printed in a numbered edition of 400, a second edition of 500 was published in 1967 and a third of 3000 in 1969. Neither of these later editions was numbered. It has been suggested that these reprints were a deliberate attempt to flood the market in order to maintain the book's status as a cheap, mass produced commodity. The book originally sold for $3.50. Of the work, Johanna Drucker
Johanna Drucker
Johanna Drucker is an author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital aesthetics...
said:
"Ruscha's books combined the literalness of early California pop art with a flat-footed photographic aesthetic informed by minimalist notions of repetitive sequence and seriality....Thirty years later, with a quarter of a century of mainstream artworld activity between, the aspect of shock-effect and humor has diminished somewhat. But in 1962 (sic) this work read against the photographic landscape of highly aestheticized image-making."
Origins of Twentysix Gasoline Stations
Ruscha would drive home to visit his parents in Oklahoma four or five times a year after leaving home at 18; many of the journeys were taken with his friend and fellow artist Joe GoodeJoe Goode
Joe Goode was born in Oklahoma City, OK in 1937. In 1959 he moved to Los Angeles, CA where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute until 1961.First recognized for his Pop Art milk bottle paintings and cloud imagery, Goode's work was included along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine,...
.
"I wasn't coming out here [California] to do anything in particular, or to be anything in particular except...except out of Oklahoma...a long way from Oklahoma, that's what I wanted to be, and everything it stood for. And away from the catholic church too, and Sister Daniella who beat my knuckles with a pencil the one year I was in parochial school." Ed Ruscha
Ruscha had visited Europe in 1961, and been particularly taken by the books he saw for sale 'on the street, in those little bookstalls,' and been impressed by the 'non-commercial look... a strange kind of sober design including the typography and the binding and everything.' Back in Los Angeles, he conceived the idea initially as a play on words, deciding upon the title first, then working on the typography and design before taking the photographs. He took about 60 photographs, and edited them down to 26 by removing any that he felt were too interesting.
The Book
Tucumcari, New Mexico
Tucumcari is a city in and the county seat of Quay County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 5,989 at the 2000 census. Tucumcari was founded in 1901, two years before Quay County was founded.-History:...
, that appears to have been taken from a moving car. But for three people walking across the forecourt on the Sunset Strip
Sunset Strip
The Sunset Strip is the name given to the mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through West Hollywood, California. It extends from West Hollywood's eastern border with Hollywood at Harper Avenue, to its western border with Beverly Hills at Sierra Drive...
, a man getting out of his car at Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff is a city located in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2010, the city's population was 65,870. The population of the Metropolitan Statistical Area was at 134,421 in 2010. It is the county seat of Coconino County...
and a man looking under his hood at Lipton
Lipton
Lipton is a brand of tea currently owned by Unilever.-History of Lipton Tea:Lipton was created at the end of the 19th century by a grocer, Sir Thomas Lipton, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1893, he established the Thomas J. Lipton Co., a tea packing company with its headquarters and factory in Hobo ken,...
, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, there are no people present. There are no cars visible in some of the photos. Almost all of the photos are taken from the other side of the highway.
All of the gasoline stations are on Route 66
U.S. Route 66
U.S. Route 66 was a highway within the U.S. Highway System. One of the original U.S. highways, Route 66 was established on November 11, 1926 -- with road signs erected the following year...
, a road that had already been mythologized by the TV series Route 66
Route 66 (TV series)
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...
and in Steinbeck's
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
The Grapes Of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
, and later reappeared as a motif in Dennis Hopper's
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
. The order that the stations appear is almost the same as their position on the route west-east, with five stations moved out of order. With the exception of the last station in Groom, Texas, the relevant states listed are all in order.
The first edition was numbered and occasionally signed, which Ruscha later admitted was a 'mistake'. Apart from this detail, the books are defined by their 'professional polish, a clear-cut machine finish.'
"I have eliminated all text from my books- I want absolutely neutral material. My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of 'facts', my book is more like a collection of readymades.....It is almost worth the money to have the thrill of 400 exactly identical books stacked in front of you." Ed Ruscha
Later, in an interview in the National Observer, Ruscha declared;
"I want to be the Henry FordHenry FordHenry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
of book making."
The book is covered with a semi-transparent glassine
Glassine
Glassine is a very thin and smooth paper that is air and water resistant. It is translucent unless dyes are added to color it or make it opaque...
dust jacket for protection. About fifty copies of the first edition came in a black cardboard slipcase. Apart from this, and the numbering on the last page of the first edition, each of the three editions is basically identical; but for the details of each edition at the beginning of the book, the three are indistinguishable.
Possible meanings
A lot of critics have assigned a religious sub-text to the work, seeing a correlation between the gasoline stations and the 14 Stations of the CrossStations of the Cross
Stations of the Cross refers to the depiction of the final hours of Jesus, and the devotion commemorating the Passion. The tradition as chapel devotion began with St...
, traditionally the staging posts between Pilate's condemnation and the burial of Christ after His crucifixion
Crucifixion of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus and his ensuing death is an event that occurred during the 1st century AD. Jesus, who Christians believe is the Son of God as well as the Messiah, was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally executed on a cross...
on Calvary
Calvary
Calvary or Golgotha was the site, outside of ancient Jerusalem’s early first century walls, at which the crucifixion of Jesus is said to have occurred. Calvary and Golgotha are the English names for the site used in Western Christianity...
. Ruscha, a lapsed catholic, has gone some way to supporting this view in interviews:
There is a connection between my work and my experience with religious icons, and the stations of the cross and the Church generally, but it's in one of method, you know; I do have some flavors that come over, like the incense... we all go through stages... the attitude comes out of a whole style of living and then coming up with statements.
The book has also been cited as an artist's book equivalent of a road movie, and as a pop version of Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
' photos of America, such as his deserted gasoline station in 'Highway Corner Reedsville West Virginia, 1935'. (Although Ruscha has admitted knowledge of Evans' work, he has dismissed it as an influence.) The last image, of a Fina station, has been interpreted as a Duchampian
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
pun on Fin (end).
Reception
Originally, the book was received poorly; despite being published the same year as Ruscha's first exhibition at the Ferus GalleryFerus Gallery
The Ferus Gallery was a contemporary art gallery operating from 1957-1966. In 1957 it was located at 736-A North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, California...
, Los Angeles-which also represented Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
- the book was rejected by the Library of Congress for its 'unorthodox form and supposed lack of information'. The book gradually acquired cult status through the sixties, and by the eighties was often being hailed as the first modern artist's book although in fact Dieter Roth's
Dieter Roth
Dieter Roth was an Icelandic artist of Swiss German origin best known for his artist's books and for his sculptures and pictures made with rotting food stuffs. He was also known as Dieter Rot and Diter Rot....
artist's books share the same mass produced aesthetic and investigate the nature of books with at least as much formal vigour, and predate Ruscha's first publication by 7 years. Additionally, Warja Lavater's
Warja Honegger-Lavater
Warja Honegger-Lavater was born in Winterthur, Switzerland. She was a Swiss artist and illustrator noted primarily for working in the artist's books genre by creating accordion fold books that re-tell classic fairy tales with symbols rather than words .- Personal life :Honegger-Lavater spent the...
first book, William Tell (New York : Junior Council, Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, 1962 (OCLC ), an accordion folded book written using symbols only, preceded Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations.
An original signed copy of Twentysix Gasoline Stations is now worth up to $35,000.
Copies are kept in public collections across the world, including MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
, V&A, Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
, and the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
.