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Drawings & Notes

2 November 2019

Marcel Dzama: Drawing with Raymond Pettibon

Nice Extended Play from Art21. Marcel Dzama on Raymond Pettibon: ‘I really feel that he opened the door for the acceptance of drawing as a main artform, not just the sketch before the painting, or before the sculpture. He really put in his feet in the door, and then i got in as well.’

16 October 2019
drawing Raymond Pettibon - No Title (Raymes Ave though...), 2019 / Ink, acrylic, and graphite on paper - contemporary drawing, drawings, work on paper, art on paper, contemporary art

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (Raymes Ave though…), 2019
Ink, acrylic, and graphite on paper
149.9 x 132.1 cm

Raymond Pettibon. Frenchette
16 october – 23 november 2019
David Zwirner, Paris

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (3 sum, gumball? …), 2019
Ink, acrylic, and colored pencil on paper
66.4 x 101.6 cm

[from the pressrelease]
Pettibon’s influential oeuvre engages a wide spectrum of American iconography variously pulled from literature, art history, philosophy, religion, politics, sports, and alternative youth culture, among other sources. Intermixing image and text, his drawings engage the visual rhetorics of pop and commercial culture while incorporating language from mass media as well as classic texts by writers such as William Blake, Marcel Proust, John Ruskin, and Walt Whitman. Through his exploration of the visual and critical potential of drawing, Pettibon’s practice harkens back to the traditions of satire and social critique in the work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists and caricaturists such as William Hogarth, Gustave Doré, and Honoré Daumier, while reinforcing the importance of the medium within contemporary art and culture today.

The works on view feature both entirely new subjects for the artist as well as characters and motifs that Pettibon has returned to often. Recurring figures and themes include Gumby, baseball, US presidents, animals, totalitarian dictators, and waves, among others. In the works depicting Gumby, Pettibon recodes the wide-eyed innocence of the classic children’s television character as strung-out paranoia. One work, No Title (John Ford directed …), shows Gumby wearing a cowboy hat and riding his sidekick, the orange horse Pokey. To the left of the figures, Pettibon has written ‘John Ford directed: Irish riding the Protestands’, comically merging Gumby with John Wayne, the star of many of Ford’s famous westerns, while injecting the contentious religious opposition between Irish Catholics and Protestants through the symbolism of the colours of green and orange.

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (Central to my…), 2019
Ink and graphite on paper
59.7 x 70.5 cm

21 May 2018

Raymond Pettibon

Untitled (“Seeing Reyd blowing…”), 2017
acrylic and ink on paper
76.2 x 55.9 cm

Raymond Pettibon …No Hugs Coming
27 April – 2 June 2018
CFA Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

Raymond Pettibon

Untitled (“But she didn’t…”), 2003
pen and ink on paper
76.2 x 57.2 cm

Raymond Pettibon

Untitled (“It was a…”), 2016
ink and collage on paper
55.9 x 76.2 cm

Raymond Pettibon

Untitled (“Spread one thousand…”, 2018
ink, watercolour, graphite and collage on paper
77.5 x 101.9 cm

11 February 2018

Francis Alÿs

Cut, 1992-2015
Oil and encaustic on panel
40.6 x 49.8 cm

David Zwirner: 25 Years
13 January – 14 february 2018
David Zwirner Gallery, New York

Marcel Dzama

Die Verwandlung, 2017
Watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper
240.7 x 167.6 cm

Jockum Nordström

På museum, 2017
Watercolor, graphite, crayon, and collage on paper
154 x 120.3 cm

Oscar Murillo

Untitled, 2017
Oil, oil stick, and graphite on canvas and linen
295.3 x 264.8 cm

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (Boston Brave), 2017
Acrylic and colored pencil on paper
160 x 127.6 cm

24 June 2017

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (The indivisible point…), 2017
Ink on paper
111.8 x 77.5 cm

Raymond Pettibon: TH EXPLOSIYV SHOYRT T
29 April – 24 June 2017
David Zwirner, New York

Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Which was worn…), 2017
Ink, watercolor, and collage on paper
106.7 x 127 cm

[from the pressrelease]

Pettibon’s work embraces a wide spectrum of American high and low culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, sports, religion, politics, sexuality, and literature. Taking their point of departure in the Southern California punk-rock scene of the late 1970s and 1980s 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.

The exhibition includes drawings and collages—a relatively new introduction within the artist’s oeuvre—in Pettibon’s characteristic bold style. The title (here rewritten using the artist’s personalized spelling) refers to a 1963 book by legendary American football coach Homer Rice, which details his variation on the so-called T-formation, the precursor to most modern offensive formations in the sport. The potent and aggressive associations of the phrase are echoed throughout the works on view, which shrewdly address facets of contemporary American life.

In keeping with Pettibon’s practice, most of the works pair image and text, with each informing the other in a circular fashion. Ranging from a few words to a number of paragraphs, the often rhythmic prose reflects the artist’s longstanding interest in poetry and philosophy. Quoting freely from sources such as John Ruskin, Walt Whitman, Jacques Derrida, the Bible, and social media, and often adding self-coined expressions, the handwritten words complement Pettibon’s bold imagery in adding humor and unexpected layers to the subject matter. Vintage cartoons by artists such as Charles Addams and Peter Arno are a new influence behind some of the works included in the exhibition, presenting an additional narrative component to his motifs.

Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Noyt that he’s…), 2017
Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper
77.5 x 111.8 cm

Raymond Pettibon
No Title (In society I…), 2017
Pencil, ink, and acrylic on paper
111.8 x 77.5 cm

25 June 2016

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (Crow quill. Throughout…), 2016
mixed media on paper

Raymond PettibonBakersfield to Barstow to Cucamonga to Hollywooyd
25 June – 20 August 2016
Sadie Coles, London

Raymond Pettibon
No Title (The thought is…), 2016
ink and watercolor on paper
121.5 x 131.5 x 4.5 cm

Raymond Pettibon
No Title (The greayt power…), 2016
mixed media on paper

16 December 2008

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (The eyes are), 2008
Pen, ink, gouache, acrylic and collage on paper
59.7 x 45.7 cm

Raymond Pettibon
Part II: Cutting-Room Floor Show
13 December 2008 – 24 January 2009
Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (The birth of), 2008
Pen, ink, gouache, acrylic and collage on paper
69.9 x 68.6 cm

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (The Emperor has), 2008
Pen, ink, gouache and collage on paper
48.3 x 35.6 cm

[from the pressrelease] – Raymond Pettibon’s  Cutting-Room Floor Show (Part II) introduces recent explorations in both color and collage. Pettibon started working in collage in the mid 80’s with simple newsprint elements collaged onto black and white images, and in works from 1992-93, the process became more complex. In this current exhibition the collages are extremely worked, layering images and text to produce intricate scenarios and non-linear narratives. Also on view are his powerful paintings on paper, depicting an anarchic combination of the past and present. The works suggest that although history repeats itself, rupture is still possible.

The subject matter in these new works on paper are a continuation of Pettibon’s oeuvre: the landscape of war, politics, popular culture, and history. Eloquently playing with multiple ideas at once, Pettibon’s works have various levels of interpretation. As a result, a fluidity of images and text occur and meanings easily shift and change. The works operate comfortably between an explicit and implied narrative, making direct and indirect associations that elude a stringent definition.

Pettibon’s drawings seek to attract the spectator’s attention through their use of a familiar vernacular iconography that is already well established in the popular imagination, one that displays the emblems of optimism and bravery in a kind of equivalent to progress, the revelation of a social subconscious in which sin and pain dwell. In his illustrations, the perfectly-delimited roles of hero and villain become confused and interchanged, introducing a new relativism that calls into question society’s established values and immovable vision.

Raymond Pettibon

No Title (They don’t bring), 2008
Pen, ink, gouache and collage on paper
85.7 x 118.1 cm

A weblog about contemporary drawing, scribbles, notes and an occasional painting or photograph. Click on images to go directly to original pictures, or on the links to learn more about the artist involved. 

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