Additional Images

Provenance:

Prominent Private Collection

Literature:

Susan Dackerman, Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, p. 215, Cat. No. 61

Note:

As Susan Dackerman observes:
“In Ruscha’s Cheese Mold Standard with Olive, a lone gasoline station rises against a turquoise and seafoam-green sky.  A large sign identifies it as one of the many Standard Oil facilities then scattered throughout the United States. Viewed from a low vantage point, the building appears monumental, its sharply angled roof receding dramatically toward the horizon. Empty save a single olive hovering in the sky at upper right, the background evokes the wide-open spaces of the American West. […]”
 
Ruscha made several different prints featuring the Standard station motif in 1969. The idea emanated from Ruscha’s gelatin silver photographs Standard, Amarillo, Texas, 1962; and Standard, Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, 1962 and his painting of a year later, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas measuring 64 1/2” x 121 3/4”. For each edition of the prints, including this lot dated 1969, Ruscha experimented with different colours, while he maintained the same composition and blended skies.