Mocha Standard

The first gasoline stations to appear in Ed Ruscha’s work were the unremarkable black-and-white snapshots found in his artist’s books. Ruscha soon revealed his flair for casting even the humblest buildings as star attractions. The Standard Oil station became his signature subject, one he repeatedly returned to in both paintings and prints. In both media, the station is glamorized using bold graphic imagery borrowed from the world of commercial design. Dramatic foreshortening and bold diagonals make it appear larger than life, modeled to fita Hollywood “standard.”

Mocha Standard is one of several screenprints identical in composition to Ruscha’s paintings of the station. Unlike the paintings, however, the screenprints are characterized by the lush gradations of color seen in the sky. Here, the chosen palette of chocolate brown and burnt orange sound a soft, even melancholic note that tempers the brash angular forms of the building.