127: RAYMOND PETTIBON, Collection of eleven zines < Art + Design (Live Online), 23 March 2023 < Auctions

Complete Lot Details

New Wavy Gravy 2 Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. This work is from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

The Skull Globe Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower right '107'. This work is number 107 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

New Wavy Gravy Nelson Tarpenny and Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower right '290'. This work is number 290 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

A Can at the Crossroads Nelson Tarpenny and Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower right '160'. This work is number 160 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

The Express Sex Train Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower right '27'. This work is number 27 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

Exterminating the Eagles Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower edge '21'. This work is number 21 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

Virgin Fears Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1983. B & W, 32 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower center '134'. This work is number 134 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

Lana Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1984. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower center '395'. This work is number 395 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

Like Death Valley Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1985. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower right '49'. This work is number 49 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

My Struggle for Life After Death Raymond Pettibon, SST Publications, Lawndale, CA, 1982. B & W, 28 pages, Softcover. Numbered to lower left '378'. This work is number 378 from the edition of 500 (of which approximately 400 were destroyed).

Zine Scene

The "Fanzines" of Raymond Pettibon

Known for his poetic collisions of "high" and "low" cultural forms, Raymond Pettibon first launched his career as an artist making zines, fliers, and other ephemera within the SoCal punk scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, published by his brother's record label SST Publications. The New Museum noted upon its 2017 retrospective, Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work: "His work became identified with a brash and iconoclastic visual style that would influence and speak for an entire generation of disaffected youth … He stands alongside a generation of Los Angeles artists who have tackled the dissolution of American idealism head-on using fragments of its own visual culture." Pettibon's first zine was Captive Chains, released in 1978, and he would go on to produce hundreds more that gained a following far beyond his immediate community.

The choice of the fanzine as a medium of distribution immediately points also to the artist’s desire to exist beyond the confines of the art world and their wish to create a system of information, or counter-information one could say, that would run parallel against that of mainstream media.

The New Museum audio guide for Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Works, 2017