Raymond Pettibon (born Raymond Ginn, June 16, 1957) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art mainly for groups on SST Records, owned and operated by his older brother, Greg Ginn. He has subsequently become widely recognized in the fine art world for using American iconography variously pulled from literature, art history, philosophy, and religion to politics, sport, and sexuality.

Personal life

220px|thumb|Black Flag logo designed by Pettibon

The fourth of five children born to R.C.K. Ginn, an English teacher who published several spy novels; his mother was a housewife. Pettibon grew up in Hermosa Beach, California. He was raised Christian Scientist.

In 1976, his brother, guitarist/songwriter Greg Ginn, founded the influential punk rock band Black Flag. Initially, Pettibon had been a bass player in the group when it was known by the name Panic. When the band discovered that another band called Panic existed, Pettibon suggested the name Black Flag and designed their distinctive "four bars" logo, a stylized black flag rippling in the wind. Around the same time, Pettibon adopted his new surname, from the nickname petit bon (good little one) given to him by his father. Pettibon's artwork appeared on fliers, album covers and gift items (T-shirts, stickers and skateboards) for Black Flag through the early 1980s, and he became well known in the Los Angeles punk rock scene.

Pettibon is married to video artist Aïda Ruilova, with whom he has a son. In 2017, the couple began divorce proceedings. He is an avid sports fan.

Work

Known for his comic-like drawings with disturbing, ironic or ambiguous text, Pettibon's subject matter is sometimes violent and anti-authoritarian. From the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, he was closely associated with the punk rock band Black Flag and the record label SST Records, both founded by his older brother Greg Ginn. In addition, Pettibon designed the cover of the 1990 Sonic Youth album Goo; bassist Kim Gordon had been a longtime admirer of Pettibon's art and written about him for Artforum in the 1980s. His drawings come out by the hundreds. He started to publish them as limited-edition photocopied booklets in 1978. These booklets, which he continues to produce as "Superflux Pubs," are considered "the sum of his ideas and aesthetics". In his new works, the artist again uses the means of collage.

As Holland Cotter noted in The New York Times:

A retrospective of Pettibon's work entitled A Pen of All Work, spanned three floors of New York City's New Museum in 2017.

Public art projects

For New York's High Line, Pettibon created a temporary billboard in 2013, displaying a 2010 baseball drawing called No Title (Safe he called ...) and featuring Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers sliding home.

Other projects

In addition to his works on paper, Pettibon has also made animations from his drawings, live action shot-on-video films from his own scripts (each focusing on the American counterculture of the 1960s-1970s), unique artist's books, fanzines, prints, and large permanent wall drawings that often include an arrangement of his own works on paper almost creating an installation of collage. In the early 1990s, fellow artist Mike Kelley played guitar on an album of songs that Pettibon recorded for the independent label Blast First out of New York and London.

Together with German sound artist Oliver Augst he released the musical "The Whole World Is Watching" (with Schorsch Kamerun, Keiji Haino and Marcel Daemgen) in 2007 as part of the MaerzMusik festival of the Berliner Festspiele, Berlin.

Pettibon's artwork inspired the music video for the 2011 song "Monarchy of Roses" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Pettibon is also mentioned in the song's lyrics.

In June 2013, a new documentary series, The Art of Punk was released on YouTube. The first episode features the art of Black Flag and Pettibon.

Radio plays

  • John Ruskin Soup (Augst/Eikmeyer, Voice: Pettibon), DLF Kultur 2026
  • What we know is secret (Augst/Pettibon), Deutschlandfunk 2019
  • The whole world is watching (Augst/Pettibon), Hessischer Rundfunk (national public radio in Germany) 2008
  • Long live the people of the revolution (Augst/Korn), Hessischer Rundfunk 2004

Album covers (selection)

  • Nature Boy Vinyl Single, Augst/Pettibon, Words and Music: Eden Ahbez, Squama Recordings 2024
  • To-Day Vinyl Single, Augst/Pettibon, Squama Recordings 2023
  • What we know is secret (LP) 2020
  • You're the Top (ski) (vinyl single) 2019
  • Blank Meets Pettibon (The Berlin Concert) (LP, picture disc) 2016
  • Wooden Heart (single, picture disc) 2015
  • Burma Shave Electrics (LP, picture disc) 2013
  • Long Live the People of the Revolution (LP) 2005
  • Blank Meets Pettibon (CD) 2003

1208

  • Feedback Is Payback

Big Walnuts Yonder

  • Big Walnuts Yonder

Black Flag

  • Family Man
  • In My Head
  • Jealous Again
  • Loose Nut
  • My War
  • Nervous Breakdown
  • Six Pack
  • Slip It In
  • The Complete 1982 Demos (Plus More!)

Cerebral Ballzy

  • Cerebral Ballzy

Crystal Antlers

  • Two-Way Mirror

Foo Fighters

  • Have It All (single)
  • One By One

Iggy Pop

  • Every Loser

Mike Watt

  • Ball-Hog or Tugboat?

Minutemen

  • Paranoid Time
  • What Makes a Man Start Fires?

Off!

  • First Four EPs
  • Off!
  • Wasted Years
  • Free LSD

Saccharine Trust

  • Past Lives

Sonic Youth

  • "Disappearer" (single)
  • Goo

Unknown Instructors

  • The Master's Voice

Exhibition history

Group exhibitions

Pettibon began exhibiting his work in group shows in galleries in the 1980s. In 1992, Pettibon was invited to participate in Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s, curated by Paul Schimmel at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).

In 1993, Pettibon was included in the Whitney Biennial along with Noni Grevillea. By the mid-90s, Pettibon had exhibited extensively, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA); Kunsthaus Zurich; White Columns, New York. In the late 90s, Pettibon to exhibited internationally including shows at the Tramway (arts centre) in Glasgow, Scotland, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the 1997 Whitney Biennial.

In 2002, Pettibon participated in documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, curated by Okwui Enwezor. In 2004, Pettibon participated in the Site Santa Fe Fifth International Biennial exhibition: Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque, curated by Robert Storr. For this exhibition, he created his first animation using his own drawings. That same year, Pettibon participated in the Whitney Biennial for the third time and was awarded the prestigious Bucksbaum Award for his installation of drawings.

In 2007, Dominic Molon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago organized an exhibition titled, Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967, and included a selection of Pettibon's original drawings from Black Flag concert flyers and album covers.

In 2008, Pettibon participated in the California Biennial, organized by Lauri Firstenberg, which featured one of his works as a large billboard on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. In 2010, Pettibon participated in the Liverpool Biennial curated by Lorenzo Fusi. In 2011, Rizzoli released a comprehensive monograph, edited by Ralph Rugoff, the most comprehensive publication of Pettibon's works to date.

Since 2018 his work No title (if you can) and has been part of the permanent collection of Colección SOLO at its museum in Madrid (Spain). Temporary exhibitions also show his paintings Broken at Last, and Sonic Youth cover signed by the artists and Kim Gordon.

Solo exhibitions

Barry Blinderman gave Pettibon his first solo exhibition at the Semaphore Gallery in New York in 1986. (The Bucksbaum Award is awarded every two years and is always given to an artist whose work is displayed in that year's Whitney Biennial.) As part of the honor, the Whitney Museum organized a solo exhibition that opened in the Fall of 2005, featuring new works and published an artist's book for the occasion. Most recently, Pettibon was awarded the University of Vienna's Oskar Kokoschka Prize for 2010. Established by the Austrian government in 1980, following the painter's death, the Kokoschka Prize is awarded to a contemporary artist every two years.

Art market

The artist is represented by Regen Projects, Los Angeles and David Zwirner, New York. He regularly shows with Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin and Sadie Coles HQ, London. In 2011, on the occasion of Ben Stiller and David Zwirner’s Artists For Haiti charity auction at Christie's, Pettibon's No Title (But the sand), sold for $820,000.

Bibliography

See also

The following people who were the subjects to Pettibon's tapes:

  • The Weather Underground (The Whole World is Watching - Weatherman '69)
  • The Manson Family (Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson)
  • Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army (Citizen Tania)

References

  • Official Website
  • Raymond Pettibon at David Zwirner
  • Selected Press at David Zwirner
  • Raymond Pettibon on Artnet
  • Raymond Pettibon at Kadist Art Foundation
  • Raymond Pettibon Kapsul Image Collection