Last night, a crowd crammed into the Strand Book Store's cozy Rare Books Room. People old enough to have seen punk shows at CBGB sat next to aspiring musicians and young art lovers. The mixed group was eagerly awaiting the arrival of two icons of the '80s and '90s American punk scene: Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth, and Raymond Pettibon, an artist whose logo design for Black Flag has become a trademark of punk's visual culture.
But that's not how Pettibon sees it. "In those days, punk rock covers you either did them yourself or found a sister or brother or someone in the neighborhood who did them for you, and I happened to be the one," Pettibon said to the crowd at the Strand of his logo design, the most famous four black bars in music. One of the original members of Black Flag himself, Pettibon designed the logo at the request of his brother and fellow band member Greg Ginn, who he is now estranged from, something Pettibon spoke of heartbreakingly.
Talking about his design, Pettibon is clearly not as impressed as the rest of the world: "It was an obvious way to depict a black flag, a very economical way, like pistons or folds. I always said if you took three-fourths of any art and design class, you would come up with that—or better."
Pettibon's deadpan, self-deprecating humor is hard not to love. He speaks slowly and cumbersomely, as if each word is heavy with memories. Gordon was careful not to interrupt the artist as he spoke about his work, and although the Strand event was supposed to be a conversation, Pettibon said he was too "in awe" of Gordon to ask her questions.
The two artistic legends appeared at the Strand to celebrate the release of Pettibon's new book Raymond Pettibon: To Witin conjunction with David Zwirner Gallery, who exhibited Pettibon's illustrations from the book last year.
During the show, Pettibon used Zwirner as a studio space, something he said was very different from the din of basketball and baseball games playing in the background at his own studio. "I can't stand letting people put up my work with a level. My work is pretty uneven anyway," Pettibon claimed. "The randomness counts a lot, like the way John Cage did art." But in the end, Zwirner decided to re-hang Pettibon's haphazard attempts anyway, something the artist admitted with humorous resign.
Pettibon's sense of humor made him the reluctant star of the night, something that seemed nearly impossible when sitting next to the legend Kim Gordon. When she asked Pettibon if this collection of work (which includes illustrations of men with comically enormous penises) was more personal, he responded, without the slightest change in tone, "My dick size? That's completely overblown. That's how I got crabs."
It's Pettibon's Twitter that best captures his supremely bizarre but undoubtedly brilliant wit. His tweets often take the form of Burma Shave's legendary roadside advertising campaign from the '50s and '60s, where the company installed consecutive signs along highways to be read by motorists. Pettibon's tweets are also filled with made-up spellings and inappropriate punctuation, like a person from another planet trying to grasp social media speak with heedless enthusiasm. And he might as well be.
Dig me National Park.Half plaster n cement.Str8 up razors rest.Burma Shave's the best.
Even though Pettibon has risen from the anti-establishment punk mantra to the white walls of the art world, he struggles, like many artists, with his place in the market. "The more you try to chase the audience, the market, the weaker the work gets," he said when asked whom he creates art for. "I'm pro-market in every other sense except my individual art."
Pettibon's work, like the man himself, is touchingly funny and beautifully messy. His bold illustrations are both intensely intimate and widely accessible, and they don't make excuses for themselves. It is for these reasons Pettibon has remained an artistic force for so many years.
"It's not made in a vacuum nor made with a vacuum. It's made to communicate with people," said Pettibon to the jam-packed crowd at the Strand. "I feel blessed to have an audience because for so long my audience was my mother."
