Raymond Pettibon by Rizzoli International Publications

illustrations. One story, “City Kids”, is a sprawling, picaresque/noir fusion, set in a decaying urban environment, its vibe presaging Walter Hill’s The Warriors. The other, “Designated Hitter”, is something like a non-musical, less moral version of Damn Yankees. The 31 single page drawings provide a conceptual bridge between Mr. Pettibon’s political work and the text-rich slices of life to follow. Several of these pages were subsequently repurposed and distributed in different forms, but there’s another element to discuss first. At the end of 1977, Panic recorded a four song EP. They decided they needed a better name for the quartet. Mr. Pettibon suggested Black Flag, emblematic of the band’s anarchic energy and musical constructions. Greg agreed immediately. After the local label, Bomp, proved unable to handle the release, Greg decided to issue it by himself, founding SST Records in the process. This occurred at the end of 1978. For the label’s logo, Greg used the design Mr. Pettibon had created for SST Electronics. The cover image for the record, Nervous Breakdown, was a variation on one of the pages in Captive Chains. It shows a student threatening a teacher, who fends him off with a chair, like a lion tamer trapped in a cage. The cover art seems to be an earlier version of the Captive Chains image, due to the use of zipatone and the overly detailed draftsmanship (something Mr. Pettibon moved away from as his confidence progressed). Another Captive Chains page, based on an iconic still from Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was used for the March 1981 Black Flag tour schedule. Other pages were reprinted in the smaller format books that began appearing in 1982. But unlike much of his later work, these pieces either ran without text, or feature simple explanatory statements. There is none of the complex interaction between word and image we generally associate with the artist. But change was near. Throughout 1979, Mr. Pettibon produced a numbered series of fliers for Black Flag. There appear to have been 20 of them, and they provided him with an unexpected opportunity for formal advance, allowing a new integration of meta-narrative and image, all while functioning as commercial art. A neat trick by any standard. The earliest example here is Black Flag Flyer #7, which shows a knife thrower who has used his knives to strip his model, only to get his comeuppance at the point of her own blades. Under Black Flag’s name is the comment, “get a zero for conduct”. Presumably this refers both to Mr. Pettibon’s then-current work as a teacher, and to Jean Vigo’s 1933 classic, Zero de Conduite, with its message of misbehavior as liberation. The other text (apart from hard information) is, “Take a bath (and get your hair dyed)… at Paramount Pictures…illustrious producers of the forthcoming movie…’The Disco Strangler’, a comedy of ill-manners”. This reads almost like a Burroughs/Gysin cut-up based on the pages of Daily Variety. Its meaning may be obscure, but it sets the stage for something. Black Flag Flyer #13 uses another illustration from Captive Chains. An organ grinder has a little woman on a chain and she tugs at the leg of a businessman’s trousers, holding out her cup

our first peek at a protean version of Black Flag’s “bars” logo, a Pettibon design that would become ubiquitous in the following decade. The text, “Punk problem: It’s hard to get it to stand up,” is once again ambiguous, but there are several possible applications that fit the image. Use your imagination. Black Flag Flyer #15—“I Remember Mummy (sic)”—uses a pulp-type image of a tough guy with a pick axe working on freeing a mummy from behind a tile wall. Hard to say if the image is from a single source or collaged, but it looks good (in a True magazine sort of way) and there are several bits of text around the edges. The first is a small typed piece, probably taken from a newspaper, “Concert-goers are encouraged to bring blankets and picnic lunches.” Since the performance was at the Hong Kong Café (a functioning Chinese restaurant), this is probably just meant to be funny. Beneath that, it says, “Good news: Black Flag gets to play. Bad news: they have to do a disco set so the police can dance.” This was a comment on the band’s already growing reputation for attracting trouble and cops. Along the right side are the words, “’How low can a man get?’ ‘Lower.’” At the bottom right corner it says, “On the seventh day He slit his wrists.” Although the multiplicity of messages results in a slight cacophony, it’s possible to observe Mr. Pettibon’s textual approach evolving. Just as he was working to strip away an overabundance of details in the visuals, he would learn to do the same with his writing. Black Flag Flyer #18—“Virgin-Like Innocence”—features a pre-pubescent female figure in a manner that would cause a legal ruckus if it were displayed in public today. But at the time, there were artistic precedents in both Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, for depicting the overt sexualization of young teenagers. This was also soon after Roman Polanski fled the country to avoid sentencing for his statutory rape case, so the theme was rampant throughout the pop culture of the day. With no other text than the piece’s title, Mr. Pettibon pushed the contemporary envelope without breaking it. Black Flag Flyer #20 is the final known piece of the numbered flier sequence. It shows a man wearing a military uniform. The setting appears to be a toy store and he grins as he surreptitiously shows-off his pistol to an enthusiastic young boy. There are several bits of text. The first, along the upper right reads, “Claims he’s Mario Corelli, but he’s actually Marco Dane. Claim they’re from New Mexico but they’re actually from Tijuana.” Part of this refers to two fictional characters from the ABC-TV soap opera, One Life to Live, the rest I cannot decode. A second text along the upper left reads, “Claims she’s unclaimed but she’s actually part of the dowry. Claims he’s Napoleon Solo but he’s actually Napoleon Bolero.” Napoleon Solo was the name of Robert Vaughn’s character on the NBC-TV spy series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Napoleon Bolero was one of the pen names Mr. Pettibon then employed. Who this was aimed at is anyone’s guess. A third text at the bottom says, “The Shah’s Western-Style Cancer Cells Are Politically Correct.” This refers to a current event: the entry of the Shah of Iran into the U.S. for cancer treatCaption TK Caption TK Caption TK

ment in October, 1979.

PANEL TWO: THE OPENING Krazy is now dressed in a tux and tails at the art gallery where the black canvas is hung. He’s had too much to drink and lies passed out in the middle of the floor. His eyes are X’s. Still, he manages to moan out a request. Ignatz, also dressed to the nines, but looking squirrelly and angry, stands on Krazy’s chest, puffing a large black cigar (possibly made of Black Kryptonite as well), staring at Pup/Superman. On the floor before the canvas, several apes are stretching their paws out to touch the black shape of the painting—this is strongly reminiscent of an image from Kubrick’s 2001. Pup/Superman has moved closer, risking feeling the power of the Black Kryptonite, still trying to confront the depths of the shape and what it makes him feel. His costume is beginning to sag and pool around his ankles, as though the effect of the painting is to shrink and weaken him, but he doesn’t seem to be noticing this yet. Krazy’s words (a mere moan, to which nobody attends): “Esk Mr. Kelly What ‘Bricks’ is Made From. Ignatz’s words: (ignoring Krazy, focused on Pup/Superman) Could One So Lowly As A Studio Assistant Shake The Hand of a Hero So Exalted As You? Could You Grant Me So Bonny a Boon? Pup/Superman (ignoring Ignatz): Works seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of aesthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. (Long pause.) It can separate the beast from the man.