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Raymond Pettibon
06 September - 21 October 2001
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Raymond Pettibon is one of the most distinctive and highly regarded American artists of his generation. In the thousands of drawings he has produced over the last two decades, Pettibon stakes out a thematic territory that combines the bright shiny world of American mass culture with its darkly complex undertows. He emerged along with artists like Mike Kelly and Paul McCarthy as a key figure in the development and identification of a Los Angeles or West Coast style. Pettibon's work was originally produced for the attention of his friends - fellow artists and musicians in the punk scene in Los Angeles in the 70s and early 80s. At that time he combined painting, song writing, performing and video making for bands like Sonic Youth, Minutemen and Black Flag; but it is drawing, ink on paper, that has become his consuming passion.
Pettibon's imagery largely derives from the world of cartoons and popular culture: surfers, trains, baseball players and two cartoon characters in particular, called Vavoom (from 'Felix the Cat') and Gumby (who can walk into any book). These characters join a cast that includes familiar heroes and anti-heroes, such as Superman, Ronald Reagan, Charles Manson, Jesus Christ and Elvis Presley.
Pettibon's prolific skill lies in his ability to make powerful and poetic associations between word and image. An avid reader, he isolates a phrase or word and inserts it into his drawing, not as a commentary but as an active graphic element. Often written in capitals like a caption to the image, his works range in tone from the polemical to the confessional and introspective and explore the extremes of the human condition from the abject to the sublime. Extracts from texts are culturally and historically eclectic, including Henry James, Marcel Proust, William Blake, Mickey Spillane, Samuel Beckett, Laurence Sterne and the Bible.
This was the first major show of Raymond Pettibon's work in the UK and comprised more than 300 works on paper made over the past twenty years. It also included his narrative video work, underground comics, record covers and other memorabilia from the 70s and early 80s, plus unique hand-made books. Pettibon also produced new works on paper for this exhibition which were shown in conjunction with his drawings onto the walls of the Upper Gallery, specially commissioned by Whitechapel.
Raymond Pettibon was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1957, and currently lives and works in Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles. The exhibition is curated by Ingrid Swenson, Curatorial Director of PEER, an independent arts organisation based in London.
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