"no photography"... of Richard Pettibone???

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Revisiting the Richard Pettibone show at the Tang I was watched like a hawk by the security guards. My mission was to get a photo of one of the double-sided glass cases holding a bunch of his little paintings, to show how perfect the backs are. Pettibone makes tiny stretchers using tiny nails, with tiny braces. The backs are as captivating as the fronts.

But I couldn't get a photo because the security guards at the Tang are the most attentive you will ever see. Walking up to the mezzanine level where the Kathy Butterly sculptures are on exhibit a lady leapt up from her chair and smiled at me. I felt so bad continuing on to the Pettibone show - she seemed like she really wanted to watch someone.

The Tang's "no photography" rule is exasperating on this visit especially because so much of Richard Pettibone's own photo-realist work of the seventies was produced from polaroids taken in museums. He took photos of work by his contemporaries as well as that of artists like Eakins, Gerome, and Ingres. Those polaroids, often taken at odd angles, were then reproduced exactly - including the white borders of the polaroid.

From a wall text at the Tang beside the photo paintings -

"In 1974, Richard Pettibone moved away from mere emulation of Photorealist style by incorporating historical works of art into the pictures. Using photographs he had taken in New York museums, Pettibone depicts white-bordered snapshots of ..

Taken at lateral angles, the picture emphasizes the works in situ status. These tiny, exquisite paintings reiterate art history's reliance on photography to propagate our knowledge about painting."

It's ironic and sad that the Tang, which promotes itself as a teaching museum, forbids that further propagation.

UPDATE 12/05/07: Nobody ever commented on this post, but I did soon hear from both a Pettibone and co-curator Michael Duncan. The Pettibones sent me a CD of images, and Michael Duncan asked for my address and said he would send a copy of the catalogue... but HE NEVER DID!

Richard Pettibone

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The Richard Pettibone show that debuted at the Philadelphia ICA and which Roberta Smith wrote so positively on for the NYTimes opened at the Tang Saturday night, and before the opening Pettibone and co-curator Ian Berry sat down for a public discussion.

Pettibone, best known for making perfectly crafted miniatures of other artist's work - Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp - says he has always been into model-making, especially trains, and Ian Berry noted that even today a model train encircles his studio; you need to lift up a section of track to enter.

Pettibone was born in California in 1938 and received an MFA from Otis in 1962(!), which he says "was a horrible school". His BIG artistic influences were seeing Duchamp's first U.S. retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum (1963) and Warhol's thirty-two cans of soup at Ferus (1962). The Warhol show left a huge impression: "people were furious", "other artists were red in the face", it "made a big impression on me", "I'm still doing that thirty-two cans of soup".

Pettibone noted that with the Warhol's "it wasn't ever one painting, it was many paintings" - Ferus was a small gallery with walls that created three "rooms", every wall of which was soup cans - but today you usually see a selection of them "compacted for practicle reasons", like at MoMA. Pettibone considers Warhol's soup cans "the best piece of pop art that ever was made", adding "he never did anything better" and "It's a curious phenomenon. I've seen it many times. An artist's greatest work is the first work and the whole rest of the career is, what's the point?".

On the Duchamp show, curated by Walter Hopps (who also co-owned Ferus and gave Andy the soup can show), Pettibone recalled that the book came out before the show, and it (the book) was "all about the non-retinal and non-retinal art, etc" but we went to the show and "it was the most beautiful show". Pettibone said "I don't believe (in) that non-retinal. Art should be beautiful".

Pettibone said Walter Hopps was "the first artworld bigshot that ever bought a painting of mine", and he had his first solo at Ferus, but soon moved to NYC. When Ian asked "what brought you to NY?", Pettibone replied "fame and fortune". Ian also asked about other artist's responses to Pettibone's copying of their work - Andy Warhol said "oh, those are funny", Roy Lichtenstein loved them, "all the pop art people got it". Frank Stella "never liked 'em, he never got it", "Stella was offended". Pettibone shared a funny story of finding out that Frank Stella had bought ten of his paintings, all miniature Stellas, and soon after running into Stella at a party. When Pettibone introduced himself Stella turned and walked away. Pettibone has no idea what Stella did with the paintings, "maybe he took'em to burn'em".

There are some really beautiful little Stella black paintings in the Tang show, plus lots of his colored arc stuff. Pettibone said "I'm not opposed to repeating myself", then he said it again.

I have more I'll share later.