Wednesday, October 19, 2005

 

this from mike watt, re: raymond pettibon (one of the local great artists)

in his own words...

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/pettibon/index.html

(check out the video at that link)


Gumby, Vavoom, & Baseball Players

ART:21: Are any of the characters in your work ever heroes? Say the baseball players.

PETTIBON: I'm not in awe of what most people would consider heroes which would be someone of stature and power. In fact those would tend to be people who I don't respect at all. The public has a kind of natural awe of them that tends to be a mixture of fear, control, and violence. You could say the loss of innocence in baseball began with the fixing of the games in 1919 with the Black Socks World Series Scandal.

Players--they all can't live up to be a perfect model hero like Steve Garvey who had an elementary school named after him. But, that actually isn't a good example because he had some pretty major scandals himself. But there's something about athletes and even horse racing. Horses are athletes of sorts too. They can have a heroic stature to me. People usually tend to value an extreme one thing or another, whether it's the intellectual against the athletic. Like the jocks never mix with artists or the people who are studying physics. I admire both, but in a moral sense. I don't have any expectation for anyone other than behaving decently to other people. That's really not the true definition of a hero though.

The heroic has an epic scale to it. If you look at my baseball works, for instance, there is a kind of larger than life attitude to a lot of it. But then not all the works are a pure adulation of the ball players. I mean they go into some pretty sordid avenues. My drawings dwell on that subject quite often as well.

ART:21: You seem to like to mix the underbelly and the philosophy.

PETTIBON: Not always though. And not always in the same drawing. You can look at a lot of my baseball drawings and they don't have that kind of a resentment of most figures that you just automatically want to take them down a notch. There's quite a few that aren't like that.

ART:21: How far back does your interest in baseball go?

PETTIBON: Baseball has probably been my favorite since I was a child. Some of the others, like horse racing--that came in later--but football, basketball, track and field... I'm not obsessed with any of those. The reason why I keep coming back to certain images is probably most often that there's a visual quality that works for me, and that can be as simple as drawing horse races.

I think whether you are throwing the pitch or batting the ball, you do have that sense of movement and for an artist like myself whose work is about that one moment that can be a reason I do that. But sports, and baseball in particular in America, there's a lot more to it, there's a lot more nuances. Not just in the game itself--but that's also important to. My work on the subject does tap into some of the nuances of the game--the pitching of the baseball for instance, or hitting a baseball--but also it says a lot about what goes on off the field as well about the society in general. It's kind of a microcosm of the society as a whole.

ART:21: It's rare that an artist gives equal attention to both words and pictures. Could you have accomplished what you wanted as a writer?

PETTIBON: Yes, if I had to choose. But the point is I don't. I mean I don't feel I'm diluting what I'm saying by doing them both. Im not trespassing on one or the other. To me it's natural. I don't feel cheated. But on the other hand, I spend a lot more time writing than I do drawing. I really wouldn't want to make that distinction or feel the need to separate the two or make excuses. The fact is I make work that requires both except in rare, rare cases.

ART:21: Can we talk about the Gumby theme in your work?

PETTIBON: Gumby? To put it in general terms, you'll see in my work this tendency to take on some very ridiculous subject. Possibly you can look at it as being so far out there as to be kind of just a stray thought. Going back to the heroic figures, you can speak about a wider area of things that happen that puts the responsibility on the shoulders of something like Gumby. It's not done in any sarcastic way. It's not even meant to call attention to itself. All I'm really asking is for you to look at that with the same kind of respect that you would if it was some important historical figure or Greek statue. Or the usual subject matters that artists tend to use.

There's also a reason why Gumby in particular works for me so well. Because it does relate to the way I make work, which has very much to do with words and reading in particular. Gumby is a kind of metaphor for how I work. He actually goes into the book, goes into a biography or historical book, and interacts with real figures from the past and he becomes part of it. He brings it to another direction. And I tend to do that in my work. That's why Gumby is a particularly important figure to me. I have to give credit to the figure of Gumby himself because it's not something that I'm raising up by his bootstraps and putting in this high-art realm. Gumby's creator, Art Clokey, was a pretty brilliant guy, and it wasn't like the original Gumby cartoons weren't worth paying attention to and that I'm rescuing him from Saturday morning children's cartoons.

ART:21: Is Gumby like an alter-ego?

PETTIBON: Gumby represents an alter-ego for my work as an artist. He represents me as an alter-ego. There's actually a lot more to that figure then just 98 ounces of clay or whatever. Art Clokey was into Zen Buddhism and into a lot of pretty deep stuff for Saturday morning cartoons. Clokey was a pretty hip figure in Los Angeles and in the counter-culture of the '60s and the '50s. The beatniks and the hippies. I have a lot of respect and affection for him. And for Pokey as well, and Goo, Prikle, and even the Blockheads. One other thing that I've never thought of, but that Gumby does for me in some of his cartoons, is he goes into a biography or historical book and he interacts with real figures from the past. George Washington, or whatever. And I tend to do that in my work and in my videos as well.

ART:21: In some of the drawings Gumby is paired with a vast landscape. It's like one guy against the world.

PETTIBON: But you know who does more for me than Gumby--Vavoom. When I'm doing drawings of Vavoom I create a situation of putting him in this epic, sublime, romantic landscape and he is this little guy with a booming voice. It's a perspective that has this panoramic scope to it.

ART:21: When did these characters become part of your self or your repertoire?

PETTIBON: I don't know the exact way that works. Usually there's not any forethought. I don't investigate and find the right character that is going to express the way I want to do things. But it starts inevitably with just one drawing. It resonates and it keeps going from there. It snowballs into a persona that I keep going back to. But there isn't any design to it. It establishes it's own kind of momentum and I don't really have to consciously think about it

I get asked a lot on this subject--"Why is that character so important to you?" and so forth. It's not something that I thought was especially important the first time I did it. I may have drawn certain subjects numbers of times but it doesn't mean that I'm to this day obsessed with a character or dwell on it as the subject matter. Or that I'm aching to get back to it as soon as possible. I feel that an artist has so much to see and he just kind of works on. And you could probably say the same thing for just about any subject or profession, including, well, really anything.


Political Cartoons: Patty Hearst & the Presidents

ART:21: There's an anger and a kind of social criticism in your work? Can you talk about that? Where does that anger come from?

PETTIBON: Well, it just wells up from deep inside me so watch out, it's likely to blow any time! [LAUGHS]

I can't really say that it doesn't somewhat come from me, but my work is a lot more impersonal than most people give it credit for. It's not that I'm not angry, it's that it's not a really personal thing. Well, I don't even know about that... I think when anything is worth getting angry about you want to hold back and look at it from a distance and without this emotion, if possible.

ART:21: Is the anger an undercurrent in the work?

PETTIBON: It's a mistake to assume about any of my work that it's my own voice. Because that would be the most simple-minded ineffective art that you can make. That would really be talking down to people, and if I had such a burning need to express my opinions or whatever then I don't think art would be where I'd want to do it. It's not a good area for that. But when we're talking about the schools and gangs and segregation and so forth, those are very obvious problems and no one really needs my weighing in on it. But there's more underlying problems or issues, and those will be the things I would want to cover in my work.

And you know that's what I do all the time. There is a very direct kind of anger in some of my work to figures like Ronald Reagan or J. Edgar Hoover or whatever. You can have a million artists sign petitions one side or another--and so what? You'd really have to go back to the Greeks and the Romans and to the satire or the very personal kind of rancor that they wrote about people of the day to see what I'm doing. The pretentious, the powerful, the decadent and the corrupt. It's not done from analyzing their positions and correcting them or weighing in your own solutions, because it's not the kind of form that works.

It's like when we were talking about heroes and I brought up that the usual person who is considered a hero is really the opposite of what I would consider. And it's a way of trying to break down this kind of natural awe and respect that comes out of a fear or envy. There's this built-in respect that shouldn't be there completely. I told you how much I consider characters like Gumby with respect. And just on the face of it anyone, I think, should compare cartoons to the president of the United States. This one or anything of them really. Those are the real cartoon figures and those are the real ridiculous figures. I want to make works where someone like Gumby or Vavoom or Felix the Cat or whatever comes out as someone to respect and to listen to and you're glad you did when you're given that opportunity.

I've never considered myself much of a political artist. And most of my art doesn't really deal in explicitly political issues. But I'm not going to apologize or shy away from it any more than I would any other subject. But there is no area where anyone is dealing with this in the way I am--which is for once not to assume someone like the President automatically has a claim on anyone's respect, to follow him or to take him seriously. We don't see that at all because the real pathetic thing is this generation of journalists. Not that it was any better really that much before, but it is really incredible today because they probably pat themselves on the back and say, "Well, we're responsible journalists," and really they're just the punks of the political establishment they cover. I'm not trying to encourage art to become political. Just because you're artists doesn't mean you should have a platform. When Hollywood figures or artists decide to get on their platform, often that is going to do much more harm.

ART:21: Anger and humor. It's a delicate line.

PETTIBON: I don't think humor is a bad thing at any time really, or in these times. I make decisions all the time in my work that I won't make fun of someone just for the sake of going for some cheap laugh. I won't do that if it hurts someone who I would feel bad about. If it's based on things that people have no control over. That should be condemned for any reason. We as humans still so often times feel the need to have someone to pick on who is different.

I don't think there is subject matter to consider too important to use humor with. A lot of times, people wonder if any of this was intended--you know, like humor is just by accident all the time and maybe it's not a good thing to laugh, or maybe they're not getting it, maybe they're seeing something in it that they shouldn't. But that's not the case. I have no problems with my own attempts at humor.

ART:21: A recurring subject in your work is Patty Hearst and the SLA. Can you talk about that in relation to your use of humor?

PETTIBON: Patty Hearst and the SLA would really be impossible not to treat with some broad comic aspect to it because the SLA and the whole situation was such a broad burlesque. A lot of the best humor, whether it's the Three Stooges or Moliere, is about someone who is really strident or pretentious. The SLA and a lot of political groups from the '60s and '70s--to any time period--are so strident and they're so full of their own righteousness for the moment. Inevitably a year later, like in Patty's case, she went from being a debutante to an urban guerilla and then back again where she married her own bodyguard.

Any one from groups such as that who have gravitated to the other extreme--such as the current radical right, the reigning power of now, the neo-conservatives--that all comes from a very left wing position. Almost all those guys were at one time the opposite. And so it's hard to take that sort of thing seriously if you can see it from any historical distance. If you look at the Hearst case from the beginning to the end it's like the Keystone Cops. That can happen by chance or by the kind of ideas behind it as well.

Humor doesn't trivialize the real consequences, the people that get hurt, for instance. I'm not making light of that. If I'm going to be condemned for broaching that subject from a comic angle, that is completely absurd. I'm not a fan of the underground or the SLA. Personally or their politics. But to demonize them in particular when you had a war going on that was killing millions--the Vietnamese people and all people who should be allowed to live--it's a way for me to objectify the lines there. To even the playing field a little bit rather than picking one enemy and demonizing them to basically cover your own ass. It's a way of making nothing sacrosanct and above comedy, and at the same time not taking away all their humanity by completely objectifying a whole group of people in a way that makes them totally disposable either. I'm not doing that with any of those groups.

ART:21: Portraying people is always tricky. For instance, some viewers might think the way you depict women is misogynist. How would you respond to that?

PETTIBON: When you get asked something like that you almost expect someone to be disingenuous about it. In my personal life, of course, you can't read my mind... My work really isn't coming from a very personal point so to psychoanalyze my work really isn't going to reveal anything. But then again that becomes a very circular kind of thing because you could say, "Well, maybe it's hidden under the surface and he just doesn't realize it," or whatever. But specifically, like with Gumby, I never had a doll phase or an action figure phase and certainly not now. So that wasn't an obsession for me or a very personal thing. It came out of a certain subject matter used in a certain way. I think a lot of the work that would be considered misogynist comes from a strain in my work that is usually described as a film noir type. Most of my work that would be considered the most misogynist would be work where the women character is like a caricature in comic books, like the Dragon Lady in Melton Kaniff, or a girl usually named Velma or Velvalee or whatever.

I've been asked a few times of my work that all the characters, almost without exception, are white. That's a legitimate question. But there still is an element of caricature to my work and I'm not representing this kind of multi-cultural melting pot in my work just for appearances sake. If you looked at my work based on race, the work would call attention to itself in ways that would make it a completely different kind of work. I don't make any apologies for not doing that because it's for what purpose?

This is not autobiographical work, by any means. Even the emotions involved. If someone thinks they understand me and disagree, then okay. But there's something in the nature of comedy and especially in the element of caricature and cartoons that my work retains. An editorial cartoon is trying to be positive. It's usually really very cloying and sappy and there's no hook to it at all. I also don't like my humor to be in the service of making fun of people based on superficialities. People get picked on or looked down at. I'm conscious about that as a problem.

ART:21: Do you think there are elements of failure and longing in your work?

PETTIBON: Longing yes, because I think it's work that is best when there isn't any final resolution. When you don't finally arrive. And failure...I have to say that maybe that's because this sort of work tends to have more of a negative edge to it. There probably is more failure depicted in my work then there is success.

ART:21: Is there sadness in the work?

PETTIBON: Yeah. I think maybe it's as much as humor. It's just more latent. I think the life of the drawing is that you're always kept in suspense. It's like a serial which goes on from day to day in the paper. There's always something from the sky just about to fall on you. Even though my work is usually just one drawing, it is more of a narrative than it is a cartoon with a punch line and a resolution and a laugh at the end.



- - - - -



...and what gets written about him in papers:


http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=3585

RAYMOND PETTIBON

Dispatches from the peculiar world of artist Raymond Pettibon

by Angela Carone


plus


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050929/news_lz1w29large.html

CENTERPIECE
Living large

Raymond Pettibon takes on a project at MCASD (http://www.mcasd.org) - 'I'm doing more wall works because of the opportunity. It's nice to be asked'

By Robert L. Pincus
ART CRITIC

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