Roadside Attraction: John Register's Abandoned Diners and Sleepy Motels

The story of painter John Register seems a perfect parable of America in 1972, a year when the buttoned-down ethos of Madison Avenue still coexisted uneasily, half a decade after the Summer of Love, with a West Coast vision of freedom and open-ended possibility. Register, then 33 and working at a high-pressure New York advertising agency, stood up in the middle of a presentation and said, "Excuse me, I have to go to the dentist."  Instead of making that dental visit, he drove his wife Catherine and their daughter, 2 sons, 2 cats and the family dog westward in a '66 Volvo wagon all the way to LA.  There he learned to surf and began his career as a painter. He also raced a Porsche on weekends.  Along that westward route and thereafter, he collected and distilled corner-of-the-eye impressions of an America that most people never quite notice, like the reflective stillness of this empty diner.

He photographed, sketched, refined and painted these images until he captured something like the soul of abandoned and overlooked space.  The vacancy of this motel on Route 66 offers itself to the enveloping night, and seems to hint at other, and possibly bigger, voids to fill...

Like the motel, this bus station waits for visitors, a solitary outpost under the vastness of the western sky.  

In "Wasteland Hotel" below, the emptiness seems to blow in from the vast landscape just outside the doors, and you can almost feel the wind driving those billowing clouds across the blue dome of the sky.

Register has been compared to Edward Hopper, who had a similar interest in overlooked parts of the American scene, including its gas stations and motels.  As in Hopper's street scenes, "Last of the Old City" shows a keen interest in depicting sunlight falling on the mute faces of buildings in the city. And there is a stillness in these street scenes that recalls Hopper...

Another possible echo of Hopper's paintings is Register's treatment of the human figure. On the rare occasions when people show up inside his diners, or outdoors as at the beach scene below, they are often isolated and looking away from the viewer...

As with much great music and film, there was often the sense in this work that there was more to discover, just beyond the edges of the performance.  John Register knew that he had a hereditary kidney ailment, and this may have colored his sense of urgency in making that westward journey, and in recording these scenes.  He continued to paint after recovering from two kidney transplants in the 1980s, and died in 1996 at 57.  

Photo credits:

Images subject to copyright by the Estate of John Register and reproduced at following web sites.
Top: pinterest.com
2nd, 4th & 5th from top:  artnet.com
3rd from top:  extraordinart.wordpress.com
Bottom:  askart.com