Edward Hopper Gas, 1940

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hopper sought to create the perfect gas pump for this composition. The one in this work is therefore a composite of many pumps in different filling stations he came across during his travels. At the time this work was created Hopper took a benign view of the extension of modern life into the rural landscape. However, later on he changed his attitude as he saw the full effects of industrial society upon the natural world. The automobile radically changed rural America during the decade of the 1920s. Highways, gas stations, and motels were built across the country to serve the needs of the automobile and those who traveled in it. In "Gas" Hopper portrays this invasion of modernization into the rural countryside. The pristine newness of the Mobil gas station contrasts with the wilderness in the distance.