Raymond Pettibon

Growing up looking at the comic page in the morning is a mindless chore, as natural as brushing our teeth Then individual day we become aware of the benday dot's character its materiality, its existence. We could kick ourselves for not knowing better, for not seeing it until then. The burst artists enacted this moment for the tillage as a whole. They stood up to the empty heroism of Abstract Expressionism and the dogmatic critical discourse of the day and unmasked the illusions of representation. Sneaking their appropriated figures in the back door of formalism, they pare ed back a veneer to present to view us that all was a sham. What the clap artists did by co-opting the language of commercialism for their be in possession of "different, appealing" art was faithful to contract and new. When I started copying from TV movies, or magazines, however, I had no illusions I was doing anything original. I wasn't flat trying to be ironic or kitsch. Comics and illustrations simply worked well as a universal means of expression. I didn't perceive I had to revisit or belabor the idea of mechanical reproduction. (So plane if, from across the extent you might mistake one of my drawings for a Lichtenstein close attention as you draw closer, you diocese a giveaway. I gave those damn dots up years ago for traditional rendering: illusionistic crosshatches judiciously applied, with brush or inscribe so you hardly notice em) Today it's no longer necessary to frame that material, footnote it, or make apologies for it. We already know representations, however feebly drawn, are still representations, and therefore illusions that cozen both subject and audience.--AS TOLD TO JORDAN KANTOR

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