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Lot Essay
"It's a sin to copy in the art world because the whole game is to be original. It seems to me that it's fairly original not to be original" (Richard Pettibone, as quoated in B. Wolmer, "Richard Pettibone," Culture Hero: A Fanzine of Stars to the Super World, no. 5, 1970).
In 1969, Richard Pettibone began employing individual appropriations of paintings as elements in larger compositions. However, unlike the combines of Robert Rauschenberg or Ed Kienholz, the found elements of Pettibone's combines were taken from art magazines and meticulously copied or traced by hand. In the present example, Pettibone pays homage to Minimalism, Pop art, and Marcel Duchamp whose bicycle wheel is not an actual replica of the work itself, rather, a copy of a photograph in his studio. Following Duchamp's logic in seeing the everyday world as a supplier of art objects, Pettibone literally abides by Duchamp's intention that the readymade is a "gift that might be remade by anyone." This does not mean that the imagery was easy to remake. Pettibone painstakingly reproduces the images on a small scale, constructing the stretcher bars on the verso so that they read not only as paintings but as objects as well. He is a consummate craftsman.
In the present painting, Pettibone overlays, tilts and clusters his appropriated images of Warhol, Lichtentstein, Stell and Duchamp. The seductive looking "Sleeping Girl" is juxtaposed with Andy Warhol's "16 Jackies," a somber rendition in shades of gray of the grieving First Lady. Flanking the right side of the painting is a tilted Frank Stella that challenges Stella's famous claim: "What you see is what you see."
In 1969, Richard Pettibone began employing individual appropriations of paintings as elements in larger compositions. However, unlike the combines of Robert Rauschenberg or Ed Kienholz, the found elements of Pettibone's combines were taken from art magazines and meticulously copied or traced by hand. In the present example, Pettibone pays homage to Minimalism, Pop art, and Marcel Duchamp whose bicycle wheel is not an actual replica of the work itself, rather, a copy of a photograph in his studio. Following Duchamp's logic in seeing the everyday world as a supplier of art objects, Pettibone literally abides by Duchamp's intention that the readymade is a "gift that might be remade by anyone." This does not mean that the imagery was easy to remake. Pettibone painstakingly reproduces the images on a small scale, constructing the stretcher bars on the verso so that they read not only as paintings but as objects as well. He is a consummate craftsman.
In the present painting, Pettibone overlays, tilts and clusters his appropriated images of Warhol, Lichtentstein, Stell and Duchamp. The seductive looking "Sleeping Girl" is juxtaposed with Andy Warhol's "16 Jackies," a somber rendition in shades of gray of the grieving First Lady. Flanking the right side of the painting is a tilted Frank Stella that challenges Stella's famous claim: "What you see is what you see."