Raymond Pettibon’s No Title (Deeper Above All…) is a paradigmatic example of the artist’s most cherished series, the Surfers, and of his oeuvre as a whole. Combining references to nineteenth century literature and Californian surf culture with a treatment of line and color that is simultaneously reminiscent of the infallible hand of Cy Twombly and the graphic endeavors of Charles Addams, Pettibon creates an image that both allures and terrifies, juxtaposing the glamour of a quintessential beach scene with the awesome power of nature. Notably included in Venus Over Manhattan’s pivotal 2014 exhibition, Are Your Motives Pure?, the present works sees the surfer depicted as a graphic silhouette in orange and red. This anonymous thrill seeker, seemingly riding an impressive wave with ease, represents a conquest of man over nature; by extension, if one considers surfing as a countercultural enterprise—which when Pettibon began the series in the mid-1980s, it would have been—his Surfers simultaneously represent a victory for the individual over society. However, this triumph is necessarily transitory: as the cresting wave towers above the lone figure of the surfer, the jagged loops and heavily worked surface strike a potent contrast with the ephemeral application of the surfer’s body, reminding the viewer of the eventual crash of the wave that will engulf him.
Right: KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, THE GREAT WAVE OFF KANAGAWA, FROM THE SERIES THIRTY-SIX VIEWS OF MOUNT FUJI, CA. 1830–32. JAPAN, DIGITAL IMAGE COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Pettibon came of age in the cauldron of 1970s Los Angeles. Self-taught, he drew extensively on the work of Blake, Daumier, Hogarth, and Goya to create an idiosyncratic style and visual vocabulary that he soon put to use creating drawings for flyers and album covers promoting Punk musicians in Los Angeles, most notably Black Flag, Pettibon’s own brother’s band, and Sonic Youth. Pettibon’s association with the Punk movement and clear DIY credentials lends weight to the reading of the Surfers as representative of the struggle between an individual and larger societal pressures and expectations. However, when asked his favorite thing to draw, rather than choosing an overtly political subject, the artist responded: “Waves. To me, it is natural. I grew up with ocean views—not even so much from the shore in real life but rather from surf magazines. It’s imagery that, for a lot of people around here anyway, is pornography.” (the artist in conversation with Nicholas Gazin, Vice Magazine, November 2010, Vol. 17, No. 11, p. 71) Pettibon is responding to the fetishization of surfing, where the danger associated with the sport, and with big wave culture in particular, has led to its proponents being held up as sex symbols.
For all the resolute modernity of Pettibon’s subject, the phrases interwoven into the fabric of the crashing wave—"Deeper, above all, are the waters to man…” and “than the deep counterminings of art”—lend the work an anachronistic and cryptic undercurrent. These phrases draw upon and subvert Henry James’ celebrated philosophical reflection on solitude: “The port from which I set out was, I think, that of the essential loneliness of my life . . . what is it still but the deepest thing about one? Deeper, about me, at any rate, than anything else; deeper than my 'genius,' deeper than my 'discipline,' deeper than my pride, deeper, above all, than the deep counterminings of art.” (Henry James quoted in: Jean Strouse, “Henry James: The Lessons of a Master,” Washington Post, 3 November 1985 (online)) In No Title (Deeper Above All…) James’s musing is transposed into a new context, where the depth refers not only strength of feeling but the literal depth of the ocean. However, the work retains the essence of James’s statement; arms raised in triumph, with a cloud of spume surrounding him, the surfer is isolated in the expanse of the Pacific, a lone traveler speeding towards shore.
