Raymond Pettibon: Here's Your Irony Back (The Big Picture)

Raymond Pettibon... No Title (One immediately grasps) (2007, Pen, ink, gouache, and collage on paper). From the exhibition Raymond Pettibon: Here's Your Irony Back (The Big Picture) at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. "...From the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, Pettibon was closely associated with the record label SST Records and the punk rock band Black Flag, started by his brother Greg Ginn. Contributing work for album covers, concert flyers, and fanzines and producing photocopied books that the artist distributed himself, Pettibon was a pioneer of the do-it-yourself ethic and aesthetic, which came to characterize Southern California underground culture. Pettibon continues to blur the boundaries of 'high' and 'low,' pulling freely from a myriad of sources that span the cultural spectrum. His obsessively worked drawings tackle aspects of art history, religion, sports, movies, music, and sexuality. In recent years, his thematic scope has become increasingly topical, addressing current political and social concerns, including American foreign policy and the war in Iraq. Finding early inspiration in comic books, Pettibon was interested in the cartoon’s mode of generic and economical representation, which allowed for the development of a remote rather than deeply personal drawing style."