Raymond Pettibon: the Books 1978-98

Raymond Pettibon's real name is Raymond Ginn, younger brother of Greg Ginn, founder and guitarist of the monumentally influential punk group Black Flag. His father called him "Petit Bonne" ("Little" and "Good" in French), a moniker he would completely assume after graduating from UCLA with a degree in economics at the age of 19.

Pettibon, much to his dismay, will likely always be associated with the early 80s punk scene, thanks in no small part to the utilization of his artwork for countless flyers, album covers, and logos for the Southern California bands of that era. For many (myself included), Pettibon's monochromatic ink drawings forever interlocked with 80s American punk rock.

It wasn't until the mid-1990s that Pettibon's artwork began to get wider acclaim in the contemporary art community after his participation in the controversial 1992 Helter Skelter exhibition at the MOCA in LA and his major solo exhibitions in New York and LA in 1995. Pettibon received the prestigious Bucksbaum Award concurrent with his participation in the the 2004 Whitney Biennial. He is fast becoming known as a pioneer of contemporary figurative art and one of the most important artists of the past 50 years.

In 1978, during his brief career teaching mathematics in LA high schools, Pettibon self-published Captive Chains, a collection of 64 drawings. While not thematically (and certainly not narratively) bound together, the artwork still presented the cohesive "Pettibon style" and content he continues to express today: High contrast pen and ink drawings with small pieces of narration (often borrowed from traditional texts). Darkness, hopelessness, and criminal horrors pervade the works. The comparisons to film noir are unavoidable.

1981's follow-up, Tripping Corpse 1, featured 14 black and white drawings on colored paper and 10 pages of mimeographed text: the Psychedelic Translation of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. On the first page of this book Pettibon prints "Why is Pettibon, who's been associated with punk up until now, doing a magazine like this? In one word, money. M-O-N-E-Y. You see there are more hippies than punks. Indeed, marijuana is the biggest cash crop in California, my home state, and as we all know, hippies like to look at drawings while they hallucinate."
Despite the sarcastic nature of this proclamation, these books and their unsparing displays of a counterculture's self-deception (particularly that of the 1960s hippies) were aimed at an older and entirely new audience from his punk contemporaries.

Tripping Corpse, and the following 44 publications made in the next four years were distributed by SST (Greg Ginn's record label and distribution company (did you know SST stands for Solid State Transistors)), and anywhere from 50 to 500 copies were made of each. In the late 1980s about 400 copies of most issues were destroyed, making many of these original books extremely valuable.

In 1988, Pettibon assumed distribution of future titles (of which there are of 60) under various business names such as Superflux, Illiterati Press, and MDA Publishers. The books, which normally would feature 18 one-side-printed illustrations and a cover and cost 2 dollars, were printed in numbered editions of 75 or less.

Pettibon's work easily lends itself to book form. While specific themes are apparent in some books, like the Tripping Corpse 1-12, most of the publications are little more than random assemblies of unrelated drawings bracketed together with a title. It is a testament to the overall cohesiveness of his lifetime body of work that much, if not all, of his art can be successfully grouped together.

Which brings us to this monster: Raymond Pettibon: the Books 1978-98, an 800+ page hardcover featuring works from all 111 self-published books, 32 of which are reprinted in their entiretey. 2 of the books have never before published, and their is a huge introductory essay about the significance of these publications. This book is zine-sized (5.5" x 8.5") and about half as thick as it is tall. It was originally printed in a German language edition in Cologne, and then printed in a very limited quantity in English by D.A.P. (Distributed Arts Publishing) in 2000. Unopened copies of this book sell in the $800 range. Used copies sell in the $250 range. The original photocopies publications themselves fetch several thousand each.

Rowan Morrison currently has two of Pettibon's books for sale:

The Pages Which Contain Truth Are Blank
$26.00 plus shipping

Raymond Pettibon (Phaidon)
$39.95 plus shipping
This book contains a full-color reproduction of the mimeographed Psychedelic Translation of Allen Ginsberg's Howl from Tripping Corpse 1, which isn't featured in the Books 1978-98!

Just click on the image of the bookcover to purchase with Paypal. Supply is limited so only quantities of one of each title per order. International shipping in an addition $6.00 per book.