Photo By Gail

John Baeder’s Stardust Motel (1977), is a crisp, sunlit portrait of American roadside culture at its most iconic. Known for his photorealist paintings of diners, gas stations, and motels, Baeder treats the Stardust not as nostalgia-soaked ruin, but as a proud, functioning emblem of mid-century optimism. The signage is clean, declarative, and bold, the sky impossibly blue —everything rendered with the precision of a memory you’re not quite sure you actually lived.

What makes Baeder’s work feel distinctly modern is its emotional restraint. There are no people in sight, yet the painting hums with human presence: arrivals, departures, late-night check-ins, and long drives implied rather than shown.  Stardust Motel reads less as Americana kitsch and more as a quiet meditation on mobility, design, and the poetry of places built to be passed through.

Photographed at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles