Customer Reviews

Raymond Pettibon: A Reader

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As someone who first encountered Raymond Pettibon's alarming artwork on the covers of Black Flag and Minutemen LPs I'd bought in the late 80s, I sort of assumed that, by now, he'd sunk back into even more obscurity than he was subject to then. Imagine my surprise when I picked up this thing in a secondhand bookshop in Dublin - an anthology of various writings over the last few thousand years (the oldest extract is from the "Wisdom of Solomon", the most recent is a truly scary extract from Charles Manson's trial testimony), interspersed with Pettibon drawings, and with a good handful of critical essays on the man's work from, like, Serious Critics. The whole was published to coincide with an exhibition of the man's work organised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago. I mean, this man did the cover for "Slip It In". Something very odd is going on.

But Pettibon has truly paid his dues, what with years of turning out small handmade zines and what can't have been especially remunerative cover artwork from that least MTV of bands, Black Flag. So if he's suddenly become a major American artist, good luck to him.

The extracts are a fascinating lot. There are some old favourites like Borges' "The Library of Babel" and Walter Benjamin's fond account of being a book collector, "Unpacking my Library." There's a gory bit of Mickey Spillane and a beady-eyed extract from Cornel Woolrich's "Rear Window". There are also Swift, Johnson, Coleridge, Robert Burton, Henry James, Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Catullus, Mary Baker Eddy, Hart Crane and many, as they say, more. If nothing else, this is a splendid companion for a medium-length train journey through purgatory.

The Pettibon drawings range from his sardonic early work to his more enigmatic recent stuff, and are all excellent. The critical essays are mostly very good, too, although there's a characteristically obtuse piece by Benjamin Buchloh in which the art-mag jargon seems not so much written as stamped out of tin. (To balance this, there's also a gruesomely funny piece by someone called "Bernard Welt" that could stand as a good short story, and for all I know really is one.)

Pettibon is notoriously prolific, and it's a shame that there's a lot more other-people's-text in here than his drawings, but this is still a great book, and stakes a good claim for his "status" in the "art world", whatever that means. Hardcore is alive and well and selling for hundreds of dollars to private collectors in Zurich, apparently.

I've got a number of Pettibon's original pamphlets, and some art books with his art. I've been a fan of his works since the '80's. This book is basically a reader, with a few of his drawings thrown in. Some of the written pieces were good, some funny, and others seemed irrelevent to his art. But the capper was towards the end, a piece written by some guy who I never heard of named Benjamin Buchloh. At first I thought this essay was a parody of an intellectual trying to comprehend hip punk art. But when I looked up ole Ben on the net, lo and behold, there he was, for real. Given that fact, I can say that this essay is the biggest piece of rubbish I've ever read. Is this guy for real? I couldn't understand the first two paragraphs let alone the five or six pages of this guy's trible. My I.Q. is 145 and I'm a college grad. I have no idea what this moron is talking about. It was awkward to read when thinking it was a joke, but now that I know this guy is a Harvard prof. it's not only awkward but scary too. Is this what universities consider a great teacher. Who knows what he's saying? Try reading it; I dare you. I'm suprised that Pettibon doesn't smack this butthead!

There's not enough Raymond Pettibon!

Yet another character I came upon purely by accident while sampling a book on how to design comix--Raymond Pettibon was offered as an example of someone using and extending comic/cartoon conventions to create "fine art" (whatever exactly that might be.) Ive been poking about in this area myself for some time convinced of the rich possibilities inherent in the comik convention--not in the tidied up ironic way of a Warhol or Lichtenstein either--but using the conjunction of text and image, especially the hand-drawn image and keeping it visceral, unpolished, raw, and immediate.

Thats what eventually led me to R. Crumb via Robert Williams and backwards to old timers like George Grosz.

Anyway, suddenly I find Raymond Pettibon and wouldnt you know it? He's doing exactly what I would have done if only I'd managed to do it! And that led me to order a used copy of "The Raymond Pettibon Reader," which is, unfortunately, only a moderately worthwhile book. Apparently it was published in conjunction with a big museum showing of Pettibon's work some years back--by the Philadelphia Museum. Perhaps the folks who put together this book figured that those who might buy it just got done looking at walls and walls plastered with Pettibon drawings and didnt need to look at any more of them in a book. That might explain the relative parcity of Pettibon artwork inside "The Raymond Pettibon Reader." The fact that there is nothing to read by Pettibon himself and only three or four short scholarly essays on Pettibon at the back of this book is somewhat more perplexing.

What is this book otherwise filled with, you might well ask.

Its filled with excerpts that somehow--so the supposition is--complement or illuminate or inform or get-you-on-the-same-neural wavelength as Pettibon and his aesthetic. I guess I can convince myself to buy such a rationale in the case of excerpts from Samuel Beckett and Mickey Spillane, representing, as they do, opposite ends of the cultural spectrum reflected in Pettibons drawings, and surely in a perfectly marvelous excerpt from the inspired courtroom rant of Charles Manson, but notebook entries on place names from Henry James? A cut from St. Augustine confessions? Some ancient English prose from Thomas More and Laurence Sterne? What's Michel Montaigne doing here discussing how he learned Latin?

Im not saying there is some interesting stuff mixed here. There is. But I cant help but be disappointed that there wasnt more directly related to Pettibon. Maybe an interview with the artist? Perhaps more critical essays about him and his work? Certainly more art. Much much more art.

I wouldnt recommend this book, but if you dont know of him yet, I would definitely recommend you check out Raymond Pettibon. His work is like the disturbing stuff you might find doodled in the notebook of the prototypical high-school loner, the kind of introverted, talented, but hopelessly misfit kid who, every so often, on a morning just like any other, turns into the prototypical lone gunman.

In other words, great stuff.

Book in the condition described, posted quickly and suitably wrapped. No complaints from this customer!

In the gray mist in Reykjavik I found this book by pettibon in the Mál og menning bookstore I was very happy to get it and i treasure it for a comfortable and inspiring reading.

OK... So I didn't actually read this book. I just thought I would write to say that I really enjoy Pettibon's artwork, and I recommend customers to buy the book, even if it's just for some cool visual material. Enjoy! Maybe one day I will too!