Philosophically profound, deeply literary and biting in his satire, Raymond Pettibon is the foremost draftsman of his generation, and one of America's most important contemporary artists. Approaching "high" and "low" subject matter with equal appetite and comfort, Pettibon plumbs the depths of American sexuality, politics, subcultures, mores, and intellectual histories through themes ranging from Shakespeare to Gumby, surfers to the Bible, baseball to German Romanticism. Published on the occasion of his major European traveling retrospective at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg - Sammlung Falckenberg, Raymond Pettibon: Homo Americanus presents over six hundred works from every part of the artist's career, the majority of which have never been shown before. Arranged thematically in thirty-two chapters, this unique catalogue charts the appearance and development of the themes that have come to define Pettibon's expansive oeuvre. Different sections are introduced with excerpts from interviews conducted with the artist.
Beyond shedding valuable light on the genesis and cross - pollination of Pettibon's thematic interests, this catalogue is the first to tackle the artist's work as a whole - as a kind of hive mind of American culture whose various branches constantly address and reinterpret one another. Of particular interest are Pettibon's own readings of individual works in the book. In excerpts paired with corresponding images, Pettibon guides readers through his complex, often meandering turns of thought; never condescending, they invite readers to enter more deeply into his thinking without sacrificing the intellectual rigor and sense of mystery that makes Pettibon's work so compelling and challenging. The book includes a complete facsimile of his first artists' book, Captive Chains - almost entirely unavailable for decades - in addition to numerous early drawings completed with his nephew, record covers, flyers, and sections dedicated to collages and drawings from the 1980s to today. This unparalleled selection of Pettibon's work is the definitive single volume for novices and experts alike.
Author Biography:
Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957, Tucson) is known for his work that embraces a wide spectrum of American high and low culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality. Taking their points of departure in the Southern California punk-rock culture of the late 1970s and 1980s and the do-it-yourself aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary, ranging from punchy and political to high literary and extremely poetic.
Ulrich Loock was born in 1953 in Braunschweig, Germany. He was Director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1985-1997, Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland from 1997-2001, and Deputy Director of Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal from 2003-2010. He currently lives and works in Berlin as an independent curator, art critic, and lecturer. He has curated numerous exhibitions of artists such as Michael Asher, Matthew Barney, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Katharina Grosse, Eberhard Havekost, Maria Lassnig, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schu¨tte, Thomas Struth, Luc Tuymans, and Christopher Wool. In 1995, he curated a comprehensive show of Raymond Pettibon's work at Kunsthalle Bern, and included the artist's work in the 2006 show The 80s. A Topology at Museu de Serralves.
Lucas Zwirner is Head of Content at David Zwirner. He is known for creating the ekphrasis series, dedicated to publishing short texts on visual culture by artists and writers, rarely available in English. He has also written on numerous contemporary artists and translated books from German and French.
