Biography

John Register’s depictions of ordinary places and commonplace objects are emblematic of America’s depersonalized landscape. A haunting stillness pervades many of Register’s empty cafés, anonymous motels, and lonesome storefronts, evoking feelings of quiet isolation and alienation that call to mind the work of his predecessor Edward Hopper. But although Register was flattered by the comparison, he pointed out that “with Hopper, you witness someone else’s isolation; in my pictures, I think you, the viewer, become the isolated one.”1

Register was born in New York City in 1939, moved with his mother to California at age three, and spent much of his life criss-crossing the United States. As a young boy he made annual visits to his father’s home in Massachusetts, and then attended boarding school in New Jersey. In 1957, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in English before taking painting classes at the Académie Julian in Paris. Although he never intended to paint professionally, upon his return, he studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute) with influential figurative artists Elmer Bischoff and Nathan Oliveira.

Between 1962 and 1964, Register studied advertising and design at the Art Center in Los Angeles and the Pratt Institute in New York. He rose quickly among the ranks of advertising executives, shuttling between various companies on the East and West Coasts, and eventually advanced to associate creative director at Ogilvie & Mather in New York City. But Register was not content with his corporate success, and in 1972 he walked out of a business meeting and away from his advertising career forever. After taking classes at the Art Students League in New York, he moved his family to Southern California and pursued painting full-time.

Register’s extensive travels did not leave him in want of artistic subject matter, and his personal feelings of anxiety over persistent health problems helped to set the mood for his melancholic scenes. Desert Restaurant (1986) is but one in a series of images of vacant cafés that Register painted following his illness. The interior is modeled after a restaurant the artist once visited in Passaic, New Jersey, however, rather than depicting the Passaic waterfalls outside the five large picture windows, Register inserted a vast desert landscape crowded with sagebrush. He pressed a row of five empty barstools tightly against a reflective countertop and lined the exterior wall with vinyl booths, one of his favorite subjects. As he recalled, “I remember myself as a teenager sliding into those booths—everyone slid into them. … The booths recede back into an endless vanishing point, symbolizing the repetition of a common human experience.”2

Register found the desert to be a powerful metaphor for his greater lifelong journey. “I like desert imagery and the stillness it implies. … In Desert Restaurant I wanted to show the difference between the shelter inside and the unforgiving desert outside. You can die in the desert. A café is a refuge. In Desert Restaurant, the viewer sees a safe environment, while outside is an environment that would kill him.”3 Register’s paintings offer a lesson in survival, and his painting philosophy mirrors his humble pursuit of happiness. For Register, the act of painting was cathartic, and with each completed canvas he came a bit closer to knowing himself more fully. —A.W.

1. John Register, quoted in Barnaby Conrad III, John Register: Persistent Observer (San Jose and San Francisco: San Jose Museum of Art and Modernism Gallery, 1998), 62.
2. Ibid, 52.
3. Ibid, 94.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

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