Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon American, b. 1957 Exhibitions The Cities Collect (2000) Holdings 22 drawings, 1 portfolio of prints, 1 book
Raymond Pettibon’s iconoclastic, edgy ink drawings are reminiscent of underground comic-strip panels, pulpmagazine illustrations, or film-noir stills. They gained early recognition in the late 1970s when they appeared on album covers and other printed pieces produced by fringe rock bands such as Black Flag and Sonic Youth. These ventures led him to produce self-published books of his collated images, often crudely drawn, which he photocopied and distributed in small editions. Since then, Pettibon’s working process has continued to be a cumulative one. Though he received no formal art-school training, he nonetheless admits to learning much from the graphic styles of artists throughout history such as Francisco Goya, William Blake, John Sloan, and Edward Hopper. His pictorial subjects derive from an ongoing archive of disparate images culled from books, magazines, movies, television, and his own notes, which are then recombined or edited to visual fragments. Like frames from a comic strip, Pettibon’s drawings are noteworthy for their economy. Some images appear alone, but most often they are paired with handwritten snippets of text, either the artist’s own, or quotations from Henry James, John Ruskin, Christopher Marlowe, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and other writers to whom he is drawn. “You might consider my work a kind of pulling the writer out of his fictional closet, so to speak,” Pettibon notes.1 Many drawings feature recurring cartoon characters such as Vavoom2 or Gumby, and images such as the book (especially the Bible), the train, the lightbulb, the phallus, the ocean, clouds, and other metaphorically loaded symbols that are significant to him. The convergence of image and language evokes themes ranging from the religious to the erotic to the metaphysical to the political, forming what the artist has referred to as “lyrical” fictions.3 Pettibon’s invented vocabulary draws in part from the city of Los Angeles, where he has lived and worked for most of his life. The mystique of southern California—as a hotbed for popular culture, a surfer’s paradise, a place emblemized as a land where dreams are fulfilled—weaves through much of his work. Like novelist Nathanael West or painter Edward Ruscha before him, however, Pettibon has turned his attention with equal fascination to the melancholia of Los Angeles—a curious microcosm of America itself—where the hyperbolical and utterly banal comfortably coexist. Pettibon’s works are typically exhibited in groups, sometimes of one hundred or more, and are often pinned directly to the wall. Though he works primarily on loose sheets of paper, he has also assembled groups of pen-and-ink illustrations in unique books, and since the 1990s has incorporated large-scale wall drawings
into his installations that often serve as anchors for scatterings of smaller images on paper. The Walker Art Center’s collection of his works forms a compendium of the artist’s abiding interests. Executed on a variety of papers with materials ranging from bold pen and ink to aqueous fields of watercolor, the drawings are sometimes awkward and clumsy, at other times detailed and painterly. When viewed collectively, the pictures and texts form roving, disjointed narratives-by-association that provide an incisive and often illuminating commentary on the character of American culture. S.E. Notes 1. Pettibon, interview with Ulrich Loock, in Ulrich Loock, ed., Raymond Pettibon, exh. cat. (Bern: Kunsthalle Bern, 1995), 85. 2. Vavoom was a character from the Felix the Cat cartoons. 3. Quoted in Loock, Raymond Pettibon, 93.
Raymond Pettibon No title (We almost made it out of Kansas) 1989 ink on paper 13 7/8 x 11 in. (35.2 x 27.9 cm) Anonymous gift, 1998 1998.2
RAYMOND PETTIBON 453
Raymond Pettibon No title (My god, was) 1990 ink on paper 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.67
Raymond Pettibon No title (He allowed her) 1987 ink on paper 17 1/2 x 11 1/4 in (44.5 x 28.6 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.61
Raymond Pettibon No title (Vavoom—The chord) 1988 ink on paper 14 x 17 in. (35.6 x 43.2 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.64
454 RAYMOND PETTIBON
On Raymond Pettibon’s No title (Why are we killing) 1. Here, in this ink-on-paper drawing from 1988, we see four palookas having a Reservoir Dogs–style discussion— both crude and enlightened—while planning a hit on someone who’s got it coming. The first line is the philosophical quandary of the hit man—why murder in a land of plenty? The second line is the throwaway laughter, and the third is the double-edged twist to leave us feeling raw and wounded. Change “control a” to “be” and it’s a much simpler, sunnier, and far less interesting picture. 2. Pettibon’s prose is rarely pointedly poetic. He doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to impress. His drawings, too, have the feeling, at first glance, of having been thrown down with speed and a loose hand. In this one, notice that the hat of the man in the lower right was botched—the bill on it was added after the head had been drawn. But the seeming casual nature of the lines and the words give us the feeling that we want from Pettibon: that we’re overhearing snippets of a conversation in progress inside someone’s head—a passionate, grasping, but often dimly lit, head. 3. Questions left for us: Where is the rest of this conversation? Who are these guys? Pettibon only gives us these glimpses into seemingly complete worlds, like stills from movies—always movies from the ’40s or ’50s, always black and white. This is from an old noir film, about making things work during the Depression. Isn’t one of those guys Peter Lorre? 4. Raymond Pettibon can be credited with kicking open the door to the acceptance of text in contemporary art. Were there others who incorporated text before him? Hundreds. But whole sentences? Sentences with narrative coherence? Not many, if any at all. Text in painting before Pettibon was almost always of the aphoristic (Kruger/ Holzer), expressionistic (Nauman), or just iconic (Indiana) kind. No one dared to actually tell stories, which is what Pettibon does, much to the consternation of some: he’s a storyteller. Having seen an entire show of Pettibon’s work, we feel like we’ve read his diary, seen all of his films, read six or seven short stories and a chapbook of street poetry. 5. Last question: Why is “Spread like peanut butter.” written in blue? Dave Eggers
Raymond Pettibon No title (Why are we killing) 1988 ink on paper 13 15/16 x 10 15/16 in. (35.4 x 27.8 cm) Clinton and Della Walker Acquisition Fund, 1995 1995.106
RAYMOND PETTIBON 455
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections is published on the occasion of the opening of the newly expanded Walker Art Center, April 2005. Major support for Walker Art Center programs is provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, The Wallace Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz and Dance and the Doris Duke Performing Arts Endowment Fund, The Bush Foundation, Target, General Mills Foundation, Best Buy Co., Inc., The McKnight Foundation, Coldwell Banker Burnet, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, American Express Philanthropic Program, The Regis Foundation, The Cargill Foundation, 3M, Star Tribune Foundation, U.S. Bank, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the members of the Walker Art Center. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walker Art Center Bits & pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole : Walker Art Center collections.-- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-935640-78-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Walker Art Center--Catalogs. 2. Arts--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Catalogs. 3. Walker Art Center--History. I. Title: Bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole. II. Title: Walker Art Center collections. III. Title. N583.A53 2005 709’.04’0074776579--dc22 2004031088
First Edition © 2005 Walker Art Center All rights reserved under pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means—electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval system—without permission in writing from the Walker Art Center. Inquiries should be addressed to: Publications Manager, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403. Available through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers 155 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10013
WALKER ART CENTER COLLECTIONS
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Wayne Koestenbaum, “Jackie and Repetition,” from Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), © by permission of the author. Publications Manager Lisa Middag Editors Pamela Johnson, Kathleen McLean Designers Andrew Blauvelt, Chad Kloepfer Production Specialist Greg Beckel Printed and bound in Belgium by Die Keure. Cover art Lawrence Weiner
Raymond Pettibon’s iconoclastic, edgy ink drawings are reminiscent of underground comic-strip panels, pulpmagazine illustrations, or film-noir stills. They gained early recognition in the late 1970s when they appeared on album covers and other printed pieces produced by fringe rock bands such as Black Flag and Sonic Youth. These ventures led him to produce self-published books of his collated images, often crudely drawn, which he photocopied and distributed in small editions. Since then, Pettibon’s working process has continued to be a cumulative one. Though he received no formal art-school training, he nonetheless admits to learning much from the graphic styles of artists throughout history such as Francisco Goya, William Blake, John Sloan, and Edward Hopper. His pictorial subjects derive from an ongoing archive of disparate images culled from books, magazines, movies, television, and his own notes, which are then recombined or edited to visual fragments. Like frames from a comic strip, Pettibon’s drawings are noteworthy for their economy. Some images appear alone, but most often they are paired with handwritten snippets of text, either the artist’s own, or quotations from Henry James, John Ruskin, Christopher Marlowe, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and other writers to whom he is drawn. “You might consider my work a kind of pulling the writer out of his fictional closet, so to speak,” Pettibon notes.1 Many drawings feature recurring cartoon characters such as Vavoom2 or Gumby, and images such as the book (especially the Bible), the train, the lightbulb, the phallus, the ocean, clouds, and other metaphorically loaded symbols that are significant to him. The convergence of image and language evokes themes ranging from the religious to the erotic to the metaphysical to the political, forming what the artist has referred to as “lyrical” fictions.3 Pettibon’s invented vocabulary draws in part from the city of Los Angeles, where he has lived and worked for most of his life. The mystique of southern California—as a hotbed for popular culture, a surfer’s paradise, a place emblemized as a land where dreams are fulfilled—weaves through much of his work. Like novelist Nathanael West or painter Edward Ruscha before him, however, Pettibon has turned his attention with equal fascination to the melancholia of Los Angeles—a curious microcosm of America itself—where the hyperbolical and utterly banal comfortably coexist. Pettibon’s works are typically exhibited in groups, sometimes of one hundred or more, and are often pinned directly to the wall. Though he works primarily on loose sheets of paper, he has also assembled groups of pen-and-ink illustrations in unique books, and since the 1990s has incorporated large-scale wall drawings
into his installations that often serve as anchors for scatterings of smaller images on paper. The Walker Art Center’s collection of his works forms a compendium of the artist’s abiding interests. Executed on a variety of papers with materials ranging from bold pen and ink to aqueous fields of watercolor, the drawings are sometimes awkward and clumsy, at other times detailed and painterly. When viewed collectively, the pictures and texts form roving, disjointed narratives-by-association that provide an incisive and often illuminating commentary on the character of American culture. S.E. Notes 1. Pettibon, interview with Ulrich Loock, in Ulrich Loock, ed., Raymond Pettibon, exh. cat. (Bern: Kunsthalle Bern, 1995), 85. 2. Vavoom was a character from the Felix the Cat cartoons. 3. Quoted in Loock, Raymond Pettibon, 93.
Raymond Pettibon No title (We almost made it out of Kansas) 1989 ink on paper 13 7/8 x 11 in. (35.2 x 27.9 cm) Anonymous gift, 1998 1998.2
RAYMOND PETTIBON 453
Raymond Pettibon No title (My god, was) 1990 ink on paper 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.67
Raymond Pettibon No title (He allowed her) 1987 ink on paper 17 1/2 x 11 1/4 in (44.5 x 28.6 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.61
Raymond Pettibon No title (Vavoom—The chord) 1988 ink on paper 14 x 17 in. (35.6 x 43.2 cm) T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1996 1996.64
454 RAYMOND PETTIBON
On Raymond Pettibon’s No title (Why are we killing) 1. Here, in this ink-on-paper drawing from 1988, we see four palookas having a Reservoir Dogs–style discussion— both crude and enlightened—while planning a hit on someone who’s got it coming. The first line is the philosophical quandary of the hit man—why murder in a land of plenty? The second line is the throwaway laughter, and the third is the double-edged twist to leave us feeling raw and wounded. Change “control a” to “be” and it’s a much simpler, sunnier, and far less interesting picture. 2. Pettibon’s prose is rarely pointedly poetic. He doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to impress. His drawings, too, have the feeling, at first glance, of having been thrown down with speed and a loose hand. In this one, notice that the hat of the man in the lower right was botched—the bill on it was added after the head had been drawn. But the seeming casual nature of the lines and the words give us the feeling that we want from Pettibon: that we’re overhearing snippets of a conversation in progress inside someone’s head—a passionate, grasping, but often dimly lit, head. 3. Questions left for us: Where is the rest of this conversation? Who are these guys? Pettibon only gives us these glimpses into seemingly complete worlds, like stills from movies—always movies from the ’40s or ’50s, always black and white. This is from an old noir film, about making things work during the Depression. Isn’t one of those guys Peter Lorre? 4. Raymond Pettibon can be credited with kicking open the door to the acceptance of text in contemporary art. Were there others who incorporated text before him? Hundreds. But whole sentences? Sentences with narrative coherence? Not many, if any at all. Text in painting before Pettibon was almost always of the aphoristic (Kruger/ Holzer), expressionistic (Nauman), or just iconic (Indiana) kind. No one dared to actually tell stories, which is what Pettibon does, much to the consternation of some: he’s a storyteller. Having seen an entire show of Pettibon’s work, we feel like we’ve read his diary, seen all of his films, read six or seven short stories and a chapbook of street poetry. 5. Last question: Why is “Spread like peanut butter.” written in blue? Dave Eggers
Raymond Pettibon No title (Why are we killing) 1988 ink on paper 13 15/16 x 10 15/16 in. (35.4 x 27.8 cm) Clinton and Della Walker Acquisition Fund, 1995 1995.106
RAYMOND PETTIBON 455
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections is published on the occasion of the opening of the newly expanded Walker Art Center, April 2005. Major support for Walker Art Center programs is provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, The Wallace Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz and Dance and the Doris Duke Performing Arts Endowment Fund, The Bush Foundation, Target, General Mills Foundation, Best Buy Co., Inc., The McKnight Foundation, Coldwell Banker Burnet, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, American Express Philanthropic Program, The Regis Foundation, The Cargill Foundation, 3M, Star Tribune Foundation, U.S. Bank, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the members of the Walker Art Center. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walker Art Center Bits & pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole : Walker Art Center collections.-- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-935640-78-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Walker Art Center--Catalogs. 2. Arts--Minnesota--Minneapolis--Catalogs. 3. Walker Art Center--History. I. Title: Bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole. II. Title: Walker Art Center collections. III. Title. N583.A53 2005 709’.04’0074776579--dc22 2004031088
First Edition © 2005 Walker Art Center All rights reserved under pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means—electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval system—without permission in writing from the Walker Art Center. Inquiries should be addressed to: Publications Manager, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403. Available through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers 155 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10013
WALKER ART CENTER COLLECTIONS
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Wayne Koestenbaum, “Jackie and Repetition,” from Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), © by permission of the author. Publications Manager Lisa Middag Editors Pamela Johnson, Kathleen McLean Designers Andrew Blauvelt, Chad Kloepfer Production Specialist Greg Beckel Printed and bound in Belgium by Die Keure. Cover art Lawrence Weiner
