A rare gas station painting by Ed Ruscha—and the last of the artist’s large-scale canvases from the 1960s in private hands—is estimated by Christie’s to sell in excess of $50m this autumn, potentially breaking Ruscha’s auction record. The 10ft-wide canvas Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) was a focal point of the artist’s blockbuster travelling retrospective at the the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2023-24.
Ruscha, who was born in Oklahoma, first saw Standard Oil gas stations during a 1962 road trip to Los Angeles along Route 66, according to Christie’s. He was enthralled by the contrast of the bold design set against the vast landscape of the Western United States, and his six gas station paintings have become some of his best known. Several have come to market in the past few years, including Burning Standard (1968) from the collection of Chicago art world patrons Alan and Dorothy Press, which sold for $22.2m with fees at Christie’s New York in 2023. It is the most valuable Ruscha gas station painting to sell at auction to date.
If the present painting does sell for more than $50m as Christie’s estimates, it would likely break Ruscha’s all-time auction record, which was last set in 2019 when Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964) fetched $46m ($52.5m with fees) at Christie’s New York.
The painting is being consigned by Texas oil billionaire Sid Bass, according to the Wall Street Journal. As an oil billionaire from Texas, he’s a fitting owner of a gas station painting. The collection of his late ex-wife, Anne Bass, was the subject of a dedicated single-owner sale at Christie’s in 2022. The 12 works by artists including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Mark Rothko sold for $363m with fees.
Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) is a significant get for Christie’s as the art market remains soft heading into the autumn New York auction season. The auction house has also won the consignment of René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1954) from the the collection of late interior designer Mica Ertegun. Expected by Christie’s to sell for more than $95m, it has the highest estimate of any New York lot announced so far.
