Raymond Pettibon: Here's Your Irony Back: Political Works 1975-2013

by Raymond Pettibon (Artist), Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (Contributor)

Since the late 1970s, as a pioneer of Southern California underground culture, Raymond Pettibon has blurred the boundaries of "high" and "low," from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics and sexuality. Rich in detail, his obsessively worked drawings pull freely from myriad sources spanning the cultural spectrum. The resulting, highly poetic constructions function as acute reflections of contemporary society. Throughout the years, his subjects have included political figures and historical events, with particular intensity since the events of September 11, 2001. Seen here are images of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover, both Bush presidents, the Kennedys, Hitler, scenes from the Vietnam War and protest movements, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib, President Obama and Osama bin Laden. Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) studied economics at UCLA around the same time he joined his brother in the punk band Black Flag. He soon began to contribute artwork to album covers, flyers and t-shirts, for the band and its label, SST Records, and exhibited his work in group shows in galleries in the 1980s. Since the 1990s his work has been the subject of numerous major solo exhibitions.

Genres: Art

212 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2013

Reviews

[Bart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raymond Pettibon is known in alternative music circles as the guy that did that Sonic Youth and that Black Flag album cover, but to reduce him to those 2 drawings would be shortsighted. He has a vast amount of work – not that strange since his medium is mostly ink & paper – and a portion of his drawings are political. This book collects them.

The cover of this book is a prime example of the work that’s in this tome. Not all have text, and they’re not all as overtly political as Bin Laden’s portrait, but you get the idea.

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