Afghan Protest Against Soviet Occupation Looks Familiar In Scarce Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

A set of nine dramatic anti-Soviet propaganda posters lithographed on thin paper and published in Pakistan c.1980-81 by the Internal Islamic Fronts/Afghanistan is being offered by Bonham's in its Fine Books and Manuscripts sale February 10, 2014.

Each poster (approximately 375 x 250 mm) is ink-stamped with the publisher's imprint in Arabic and English but without captions. They are somewhat crudely printed; on one poster the inky red fingerprints of the pressman are clearly visible. These were printed on the fly under difficult  circumstances and we should not be surprised that the result was less than perfect.

The initial Soviet deployment of its 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979, under then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989, under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviets had been caught in what has been called "the bear trap" and the Soviet war in Afghanistan would become its Vietnam: an intractable morass, a political and military quicksand that sucked Soviet troops deep in over their heads, as it had in the past for every other power that tried to bend Afghanistan to its will. The United States poured billions into the country in military support of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, the Moujahadin, playing out another Cold War conflict with the U.S.S.R.

In the poster above, Brezhnev is scolding his Afghan parrot, Babrak Karmal, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Karmal's policy failures, iffy cooperation, and the stalemate against the Resistance led the Kremlin to become highly critical of its puppet's leadership. Brezhnev appears to be saying, "now, now, repeat after me, 'I will behave, I will behave, I will behave!'" Yet as every parrot caretaker understands but civilians don't, if you wag a finger close to a parrot's beak the bird will treat it as a chew toy on a serving tray and act accordingly. 

Substitute President G.W. Bush or President Obama for Brezhnev and insert current Afghan leader Hamid Karzai for Karmal and the situation has not changed.

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Image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.

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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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