/////// FD ///////: Raymond Pettibon | Desire in Pursuyt of the Whole

Dec 8, 2011

Raymond Pettibon | Desire in Pursuyt of the Whole

Raymond Pettibon’s “Desire in Pursuyt of the Whole”
by ANDREW BERARDINI

All the gang is here. An open-mouthed munchkin, mouth pitched back in roaring vavoom, the Reagan-headed claymation adventurer Gumby, weird scientists, weirder hippies, butch baseball players, and a gang of distant surfers sliding down the faces of pristine blue curls, most of it accompanied by the clipped noir narrative and untraceable quotations of Raymond Pettibon’s scattered story, the one he’s been writing for decades. Not every piece contains an old character though, and there’s even an unfamiliar stage: a clutch of collages occupy part of the exhibition, curled edges of layer after layer, old ads and celebrity snapshots, battered Valentines and newspaper clippings, but mostly just drawings layered on drawings, some stripped and simple, others spooky and complex, all of them an all-over-the-place mess.

But there’s something about looking at a new exhibition by Raymond Pettibon that is always like looking at an exhibition by Raymond Pettibon. In a first blushing witness of the work, the language, the voice was all there, and this last viewing finds the same: the pitched-punk anger balanced against something altogether fragile, heartbroken, and literary. The visual language is like that of a cartoon that’s wandered far from its comic book origins and found an oasis where Egon Schiele nudes trade baseball cards and read hellfire religious tracts chock-full of hard-luck stories, good Christians falling prey to hippie Satanists. Since its public inception under the banner of SoCal punks Black Flag, Pettibon’s distinct visual style has grown older, stronger, the lines so confident that even when reckless are still inimitable (though many try). The style has not grown less thrilling in its familiarity. Pettibon is still like a good punk record, even if he’s managed a nuance and subtlety that was never punk.

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