Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Early Books of Artist Raymond Pettibon

by Stephen J. Gertz

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Pig Cupid.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt, Raymond Pettibon: The Art 1978-1998, 31.
"Why do I dream of undertow when I don't even know what it is?

Comics, books, film noir, pulp fiction, TV, politics, advertising, violence, the famed and the infamous: Artist Raymond Pettibon inhales pop-culture and, gas exchanged, exhales its carbon dioxide into a teeming mosh-pit. It is no accident that warnings of global warming began to increase in volume when he established his career as Southern California's  - and, ultimately, the world's - prince of Punk Art (though he rejects labels). For better or worse, when Pettijavascript:void(0)bon puts pen and ink to paper the temperature rises. His books have become rare and highly desirable.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Capricious Missives.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1983. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 9.
"Even toothless she can still bite off a boy's head."
PETTIIBON, Raymond and Michael Gira. Selfishness.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Orht 32.
"I want her to dream about what I did to her when she passed out."

Charles Manson, Ronald Reagan, various and sundry speed freaks on a high wire,  hippies, punks,  baseball players, surfers, and, good grief, it's Gumby, etc., populate his images, an idiosyncratic ensemble exploding from Pettibon's cerebral popcorn popper onto paper with an occasional un-popped kernel breaking a tooth. Who said art wasn't risky?

PETTIIBON, Raymond. The Navigator's Wives.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 27.
"I am still working on my public face!"
PETTIIBON, Raymond. Cars, TV, Rockets, H-Bomb - You Name It.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 21.
"Perhaps the fact that I hadn't had sex in 3 whole days left me vulnerable."

William Blake, Henry James, the Bible,  Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa - Pettibon co-opts their work and others' and reprints or reshapes it, his personal warp jump-starting their text and driving it into another direction, disturbing, ironic and ambiguous. The work in toto is provocative and vital.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Jane's Book of Fighting.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 24.
"She even had a little moustache."

Raymond Pettibon began life in Tucson Arizona in 1957 as Raymond Gill. He earned a degree in economics from UCLA and was working as a math teacher when his brother, Greg, established the seminal Punk band, Black Flag, in 1977. Raymond provided the group's name and designed their logo. He changed his surname. He created posters and handbills for the L.A. punk scene. He designed record covers for Black Flag's label, SST (Super-Sonic Transport, in homage to the now dearly-departed Concorde). By the early 1980s, he had established a reputation as the music movement's visual brother and had begun to produce small, simply produced books published and distributed through SST.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. A Can at the Crossroads.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm).  Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 20.
"I saw Christ. I was drunk but still lucid to be searching."
PETTIIBON, Raymond. New Wavy Gravy.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 29.
"Of course he became a Christian."

The books from the early 'eighties through 1985 were released in limited editions of 500 copies. Despite their $1.25 price the books, however, did not sell well at all. It was Remainder City at Pettibon-central in Venice Beach, CA and, according to the artist, he destroyed the bulk of the print run for each volume, only 100 copies, slightly more or less, of each title escaping the compost heap.

PETTIIBON, Raymond. Tripping Corpse #6.
Lawndale, CA: SST, 1985. Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100).
Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm). Original stapled pictorial wrappers.
Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 36.
"It doesn't matter where they were raised or by whom.
By the time they get to Venice Beach they all look like this."
PETTIIBON, Raymond. Lana. Lawndale, CA: SST, 1984.
Limited edition of 500 (i.e. 100). Octavo (21.6 x 14 cm).
Original stapled pictorial wrappers. Hand-numbered in red ink.
Ohrt 16.
"OK, OK, I never even met her. But even just pretending with her is so
much more intense and fulfilling than the real thing with anyone else."

Sit down, dear book collector-punkster or innocent bystander. If you had originally bought any one of these little books at their cover price of $1.25 they have now appreciated in value to upwards of $450 each in fine condition. If you had any of the originals and, over the years, tossed them or lost them you may now genuflect, hari-kari huff a can of Black Flag, the Punk pesticide of choice, and experience the  grim, writhing  death that greets all book collectors when we realize how we have blundered, big-time. Having in ignorance and  without an in to the oracle at Delphi forsaken an Antiques Roadshow bonanza, we can only, as the tetramethrin kicks in and fricassees our neurons, lamely express a cosmic, aching and disconsolate "Who knew?" before life drips into eternity's inkwell and blots out, dark matter that didn't see the light soon enough. Sic transit gloria collectori de libri...
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All images courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks, who recently offered the above titles in his Catalogue Five, April 2011. They sold within moments. Sic transit gloria Pettibon.
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Of related interest:

New Book Documents the L.A. Punk Scene.
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Our apologies for the slightly blurred images; the hi-res wasn't high enough.
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3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the background. I picked up Capricious Missives #160 and Exterminating the Eagles #183 in Athens GA way back in the day, 1989? Saw some of his new stuff in a museum and it was god awful, love this old stuff though. I saw a set of 22 out of the 23 listed at 14K, WTF...

    ReplyDelete
  2. The set you mention was the one I discussed here and, given the scarcity and desirability of these early Pettibons in mint condition, the $14K was not an unreasonable price.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Raymond Pettibon began life in Tucson Arizona in 1957 as Raymond Gill". Should be "Ginn", like his brother, Greg Ginn.

    Also, I believe SST was short for "Solid State Transmitters", Greg's name for his electronics company.

    ReplyDelete

 
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