Richard Pettibone

A pioneer of the Appropriation art movement, Richard Pettibone’s most notable work is recognizable for its replicative approach to famous Pop art works, including those by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, but in miniature, and often with his own artistic interventions. Concentrating on artists whose work already dealt with the themes of seriality, Pettibone’s reproductions inherently add a sense of irony, and even humor, to original source material.

Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1938, Pettibone was awarded his MFA from the Otis Art Institute in 1962. His earliest works involved shadow boxes featuring small assemblages – foreshadowing his later preoccupation with working in miniature. His first appropriation work, which he completed in 1964, included two painted facsimiles of Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup cans. These “replicas” were quickly followed by additional paintings done in the same appropriative style, featuring imagery from the work of major Pop artists of the 1960s. In his more current work, Pettibone expands his approach by appropriating material from other sources, including book covers.

Pettibone’s skillful intermingling of Appropriation and Pop art, as well as elements of Conceptualism, garners consistent critical acclaim and has led to numerous prestigious exhibitions, including an immense career retrospective at the Laguna Art Museum (2005). Today, the artist continues to live and work in New York. His work may be found at such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.