Point Break: Raymond Pettibon, Surfers and Waves

Point Break: Raymond Pettibon, Surfers and Waves
Author: Raymond Pettibon
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781644230350

“All this must be either surfed or painted”: This is the underlying sentiment behind Raymond Pettibon’s iconic works of surfers and waves in this quintessential volume dedicated to the motif. Pettibon is known for his characteristically enigmatic aesthetic and sharply satirical critiques of American culture. Though drenched in cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps most poetic among the many motifs present in Pettibon’s oeuvre is the surfer. In 1985, Pettibon began Surfers––a series he continues to work on to this day––popular for its depiction of the lone surfer silently carving “a line of beauty” along an impossibly large wave. This publication traces a selection of more than one hundred surfers from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For Pettibon’s protagonist in these works, surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality. We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the face of the power of nature, what is beyond our control. Pettibon’s lyrical writings on these painted surfaces—both his own and lines taken from literature—reference his own philosophies and the confusions of reality: he critiques and highlights the hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate, the scholar Brian Lukacher explores art-historical antecedents in Pettibon’s work, particularly the seascapes of J. M. W. Turner, and Jamie Brisick, the writer and former professional surfer, examines the Southern California surf and music culture of Pettibon’s youth. The professional big wave surfer Emi Erickson also describes the sensory experience of conquering the enormous waves depicted in Pettibon’s works.

Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985-2015

Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985-2015
Author: Raymond Pettibon
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-06-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781941701157

Limning a dizzying array of topics with his distinctive combinations of image and text, Raymond Pettibon has created a vocabulary of characters and symbols that reappear consistently if enigmatically across his oeuvre, ranging from baseball players, atomic bombs, and railway trains to the cartoon Gumby. But the most poetic and revealing of Pettibon’s symbols may be the surfer, the solitary longboarder challenging a massive wave. In his surfer works, viewers ride along with a counterculture existentialist hero who perhaps is the artist’s nearest proxy. This revised and expanded edition of Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985–2015, the first printing of which sold out almost immediately upon publication in 2014, features twenty additional works, as well as new color separations and jacket design. Nearly all the works included in this volume depict an ocean roiling with chaotic swells, accompanied by non sequiturs, quotations, and fragments of poetry in the artist’s handwriting. Organized chronologically, the publication traces Pettibon’s prolific output of his surfer series, from early small-scale monochrome India ink drawings to numerous examples from the 1990s when the artist introduced color, culminating with his recent large-scale works, some of which were executed directly on a wall. Rounding out the publication is a poetic meditation by the writer Carlo McCormick, which captures the essence of Pettibon’s surfing works: “Riddled with enigma, Raymond Pettibon’s art speaks little about himself the artist, preferring rather to address more central questions on the nature of self, but he tells us this, ‘Some things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, but only surfed,’ or again, ‘All this must be either surfed or painted.’ ”

Pay for Your Pleasures

Pay for Your Pleasures
Author: Cary Levine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013-06-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 022602606X

Focuses on work by the three artists from the 1970s through the 1990s. Examines their participation in subcultural music scenes and discovers a common political strategy which lead them to create strange and unseemly imates that test the limites of art, gender roles, sex, acceptable behavior, poor taste, and the gag reflex.

Raymond Pettibon: To Wit

Raymond Pettibon: To Wit
Author: Raymond Pettibon
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2014-04-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780989980944

In the summer of 2013, Raymond Pettibon took over one of David Zwirner’s gallery spaces in New York, transforming the high-ceilinged, garage-like white cube into his studio in order to prepare a show of drawings and collages within—and sometimes directly on—its walls. Titled To Wit, evoking the Middle English expression that has come to express a certain formality today and is defined as “namely,” or “that is to say,” the exhibition gave new meaning to the term “site specific,” featuring vibrant, gestural works Pettibon created in conversation with his surroundings that operated as a sort of archive, both product and record of his relationship to that space and time. Unified by their bold, vivid lines and unconventional framing, they feature allusions to a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from violence, humor, and sex to literature, youth, art history, and sports—embodying the artist’s signature mix of social and political commentary, diary entry, and automatic drawing. This publication, presenting large color plates of the works created over that summer by Pettibon, who also produced an original drawing for its sturdy cardboard cover, explores the intricate relationship between image and language that has long fascinated the artist. Just as the works in the exhibition existed at once as art and document, so too does the book itself have the hefty, physical presence of a work of art. Extensive installation views capture the dynamic combination of visual imagery and text that has come to characterize Pettibon’s practice, and a selection of gritty black-and-white photographs by Andreas Laszlo Konrath offers an intimate glimpse into the artist’s working process. Context is provided by Lucas Zwirner, who accompanied the artist throughout this period and contributed the book’s essay, “A Month with Raymond.” As Zwirner describes it, the show functioned “as an essayistic whole held together by imaginative leaps and subtle connections which Raymond has left unexplained and uninterpreted.” That perspective is rounded out in an interview with the artist by Kim Gordon, a visual artist and musician, who first encountered Pettibon’s work in the early 1980s in Los Angeles.

Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work

Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work
Author: Massimiliano Gioni
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-03-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780714873695

The most comprehensive monograph in print on this provocative artist, who has helped to redefine contemporary art This thorough, multifaceted assessment of Raymond Pettibon's entire career to date includes nearly 700 images, contributions from important figures in the art-historical and cultural fields, and a recent interview with the artist. Beginning with childhood drawings, the book moves through to his mature work, which embraces both high and low culture.

Masters of American Comics

Masters of American Comics
Author: John Carlin
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 030011317X

Presents the work of America's most popular and influential comic artists, and includes critical essays accompanying each artist's drawings.

This Is Not a T-Shirt

This Is Not a T-Shirt
Author: Bobby Hundreds
Publisher: MCD
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0374718350

The story of The Hundreds and the precepts that made it an iconic streetwear brand by Bobby Hundreds himself Streetwear occupies that rarefied space where genuine "cool" coexists with big business; where a star designer might work concurrently with Nike, a tattoo artist, Louis Vuitton, and a skateboard company. It’s the ubiquitous style of dress comprising hoodies, sneakers, and T-shirts. In the beginning, a few brands defined this style; fewer still survived as streetwear went mainstream. They are the OGs, the “heritage brands.” The Hundreds is one of those persevering companies, and Bobby Hundreds is at the center of it all. The creative force behind the brand, Bobby Kim, a.k.a. Bobby Hundreds, has emerged as a prominent face and voice in streetwear. In telling the story of his formative years, he reminds us that The Hundreds was started by outsiders; and this is truly the story of streetwear culture. In This Is Not a T-Shirt, Bobby Hundreds cements his spot as a champion of an industry he helped create and tells the story of The Hundreds—with anecdotes ranging from his Southern California, punk-DIY-tinged youth to the brand’s explosive success. Both an inspiring memoir and an expert assessment of the history and future of streetwear, this is the tale of Bobby’s commitment to his creative vision and to building a real community.

Raymond Depardon: Adieu Saigon

Raymond Depardon: Adieu Saigon
Author: Raymond Depardon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Documentary photography
ISBN: 9783869309224

X93;At the age of 22 I was sent to Saigon to cover the war as a photojournalist. I was too late for Indochina, and too early for Vietnam. Muggers robbed me on my arrival, and I lived in a small hotel by the river. I drove towards the front in an old Citroën. I think I was happy. I returned some years later. It was for another war, and the famous reporters had left. The streets were full of GIs and their girlfriends, of blind bomb victims and so many children returning to school. It was the end of an epoch, people would hand flowers to the soldiers. Everybody wanted to leave, and it was cheap to stay at luxury hotels. To forget my heartache, I got drunk and walked the streets all day. The city was very generous and welcomed me with open arms, so I lost sense of time. I stayed for months in this city that no longer exists. The last time I went there I was at peace with things, and at the War Remnants Museum I visited my friends who had died on the battlefield. Today, the city has another name and has fully entered globalization.” Raymond Depardon.