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Lot Essay
Drawing with an urgency rarely matched by his contemporaries, Raymond Pettibon has conceived an idiosyncratic lexicon of symbols relating to American culture since his emergence on the art scene in the 1980s. Initially creating drawings for the Punk rock music scene of Los Angeles, his talented draftsmanship, combined convincingly with the cartoonlike, economical style of his representations, speaks swiftly, freely, and oftentimes critically, about contemporary culture.
Foregoing the sardonicism of many of his other subjects, Pettibon’s surfers are indubitably some of his most poetic and lyrical iterations. Pettibon began making his surf paintings in 1985, while living in Venice Beach, California. Although he was never a surfer himself, he was taken by the existential potential of the transcendent highs and obliterating lows of the wave, and the experience of the surfer navigating through this cycle. As the artist himself described: “It can also be the way something like surfing describes a society, and the people in it. I've done a lot of large drawings and prints of that imagery. It has that epic nature, that sublime nature, that almost asks you to reproduce it full sized on the wall." (R. Pettibon quoted in Rob Storr, Raymond Pettibon, New York, 2001, p. 25). Executed in 2010, No Title (It Would Glisten), features the artist’s recurring motif of a lone surfer challenging a massive wave. The wave is painted with loose strokes and vivid, deep hues of blue, and, with no land visible in sight, the ravaging sea consumes the entire picture plane - creating the sense of sublimity and expanse that betokens the iconic role of the surfer works in Pettibon’s oeuvre.
Foregoing the sardonicism of many of his other subjects, Pettibon’s surfers are indubitably some of his most poetic and lyrical iterations. Pettibon began making his surf paintings in 1985, while living in Venice Beach, California. Although he was never a surfer himself, he was taken by the existential potential of the transcendent highs and obliterating lows of the wave, and the experience of the surfer navigating through this cycle. As the artist himself described: “It can also be the way something like surfing describes a society, and the people in it. I've done a lot of large drawings and prints of that imagery. It has that epic nature, that sublime nature, that almost asks you to reproduce it full sized on the wall." (R. Pettibon quoted in Rob Storr, Raymond Pettibon, New York, 2001, p. 25). Executed in 2010, No Title (It Would Glisten), features the artist’s recurring motif of a lone surfer challenging a massive wave. The wave is painted with loose strokes and vivid, deep hues of blue, and, with no land visible in sight, the ravaging sea consumes the entire picture plane - creating the sense of sublimity and expanse that betokens the iconic role of the surfer works in Pettibon’s oeuvre.