Raymond Pettibon
No Title (As you were...)
2020
Ditone print on 320 g/m2 Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper
48 × 65 cm
Edition of 30 copies, signed and numbered by the artist
Out of stock
about this work
Raymond Pettibon is well-known for his brazen pen-and-ink drawings often accompanied by cheeky or witty quotes drawn from a vast library of sources – from history and politics to pop culture and sports. In this edition, entitled No Title (As you were…), Pettibon transcribed in his unmistakable scratched handwriting what reads like an artist’s skeptical reply to an admiring connoisseur. In rather formal prose, the respondent signals that what follows is an offer of his feelings “in written form”: an imposing, elongated, yet lonesome “I.” It is indeed a literal, written form: “I” as letter, as shape. But is it also the inflated ego of the artist? Self-assured and proud, the “I” is unfazed by flattery, assertive of its stature even when its line is a bit unsteady. Most likely, the joke is on us.
about Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon is known for a prolific corpus of drawings characterised by certain enduring themes – baseball players, surging trains, waves, political figures and film-noir encounters. Ranging in scale and subject, Pettibon’s drawings hone in on certain objects, incidents or vistas, depicting modern America from a myriad of angles whilst ambiguously severing these images from a narrative context. Fragments of handwritten text – placed alongside or threaded within the imagery – add multiple shades of meaning and irony. At once personal and universal, Pettibon’s works blur the categories of art history – compressing elements of painting, cartoons, poetry, the novel, and polemics.
(courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ)
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