ART-PRESENTATION: Raymond Pettibon-A Pen of All Work
Raymond Pettibon’s work embraces a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality. Taking their points of departure in the Southern California punk-rock culture of the late ‘70s and ‘80s and the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: New Museum Archive
Through his drawings’ signature interplay between image and text, Raymond Pettibon moves between historical reflection, emotional longing, poetic wit, and strident critique. Since the late ‘60s, he has produced thousands of drawings and energetic installations. The exhibition “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work” at the New Museum in New York is the largest presentation of Pettibon’s work to date, featuring more than 700 drawings from the ‘60s to the present. It also includes a number of his early self-produced zines and artist’s books, as well as several videos made in collaboration with fellow artists and his musician friends. Pettibon first received attention for his work when it was used in advertisements, zines, and record covers in the burgeoning Los Angeles punk scene of the ‘80s. His work became identified with a brash and iconoclastic visual style that would influence and speak for an entire generation of disaffected youth. He stands alongside a generation of Los Angeles artists who have tackled the dissolution of American idealism head-on using fragments of its own visual culture. From the beginning of his career, Pettibon has employed drawing and writing in tandem to connect radically distinctive cultural forms, from movies and literature to comics and TV, and pieces of narratives from throughout history and culture. His visual universe is populated by the ghosts of the last century of American history, including such disparate characters as Charles Manson, Gumby, Superman, and Ronald Reagan. Pettibon hints at familiar and forgotten narratives in his work, while using an expressive approach to color, line, and gesture in order to provoke complex emotional states. Whether his work is addressing surfing, baseball, war, or family, or channeling the voices of John Ruskin, Henry James, or Allen Ginsberg, it manages to suggest both personal and universal perspectives on our shared cultural experience.
Info: Curators: Gary Carrion-Murayari, & Massimiliano Gioni, New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, Duration: 8/2-9/4/17, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.newmuseum.org
