Pettibon and Goldblatt
dal 7/2/2002 al 11/4/2002
Segnalato da
7/2/2002
Pettibon and Goldblatt
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA, Barcelona
The show of the work of the American artist Raymond Pettibon includes a broad selection of drawings, video screenings and materials from the artist’s archive. His creations reveal his fascination with sixties American counterculture. David Goldblatt: this retrospective exhibition will be the first presentation in Spain of the work of the artist. It includes about two hundred photographs by the South African author, who has collected half a century of meticulous observation of the reality of his country, from 1948 to 1999.
Raymond Pettibon
The show of the work of the American artist Raymond Pettibon
(Tucson, Arizona, 1957) includes a broad selection of drawings,
video screenings and materials from the artist’s archive.
His creations reveal his fascination with sixties American
counterculture. Other references of his are Goya’s etchings, film
noir or fifties and sixties children’s television programmes, which
appear as fragmented signs in a discourse which is critical of the
images which sponsor the cultural power of the time. By
combining image and word, Pettibon’s work starts at the point
where the work of other cartoon and comic artists, or Pop Art
artists, such as Roy Lichtenstein, ends.
This is the first exhibition in Spain devoted to the work
of the American artist Raymond Pettibon. It features more
than one thousand works, including drawings on paper,
murals especially designed and executed for the spaces
of MACBA, videos and music, as well as books and original
manuscripts from the artist’s archives. Together, these
materials show the heterogeneity and richness of
Pettibon’s artistic production, which embraces such
themes as American mass culture, religion, sex and art.
Following the wake of a generation of Los Angeles artists
including John Baldessari, Jim Shaw and Edward Ruscha,
Pettibon, along with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, is
a clear exponent of an artistic tradition that originates
on the West Coast and is characterized by the coexistence
of underground subcultures and the fictional world
of Hollywood’s film industry.
Raymond Pettibon, - "Pettit bon" is the nickname his father, a
university professor of English and a spy novelist, gave him as
a child - was born in Tucson in 1957 but shortly thereafter
moved with his family to Los Angeles. During his college years,
studying economics at UCLA, Pettibon contributed political
who supported armed struggle against the Vietnam War and
American imperialism. The videos Judgement Day Theater: The
Book of Manson and Citizen Tania are accounts of the Manson
family and the surreal story of Patty Hearst, alias "Tania".
Captured by the Symbionese Liberation Army, Hearst later participated
in robberies staged by her kidnappers. Pettibon’s most
recent video, entitled Red Tide Rising: Venice and Mars (2001),
deals with the life of Jim Morrison.
Pettibon’s drawings refuse the aura of the masterpiece. Their deliberate
commonness provides open access to every member of their
audience. The vast body of work he has produced over the last
twenty-five years, a large selection of which is brought together in
this exhibition, could be understood as an ambitious, however
anomalous novel in which the reader has the impression not of
having read a story, but of having witnessed an accident.
________________
David Goldblatt
This retrospective exhibition will be the first presentation in
Spain of the work of David Goldblatt. It includes about two
hundred photographs by the South African author, who has
collected half a century of meticulous observation of the reality
of his country, from 1948 to 1999. For David Goldblatt
photography is a tool that enables him to analyse social and
cultural structures. His photographic documents make a detailed
investigation of the tensions and fictions typical of city and
country life in South Africa. Altogether they make up an
impressive testimonial of a contemporary African society,
coming from the industrial revolution, which has provided an
outstanding example for studying how colonialism and apartheid
can evolve.
David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, a gold
mining town near Johannesburg in South Africa. His grandparents
were Lithuanian immigrants who fled the persecution
of Jews in the late nineteenth century. As a child,
Goldblatt was raised in a family that emphasized racial tolerance.
But he grew up in the broader social climate of
racial segregation which, beginning in the early 1950s,
was institutionalized into apartheid.
As a citizen and as a photographer and witness to apartheid’s
penetration of every aspect of life in South Africa, Goldblatt
became an explorer of values and "far more engaged by the
states of being that lead to events, by the conditions of society
rather than by the climactic outcomes of those conditions."
ing the National Party to power in 1948 and keeping it there
for more than 40 years.
pass laws Laws controlling the movements and residential rights
of Africans, principally by means of a "pass" or pass book, signed
by an official or employer. First imposed on slaves and Khoikhoi
in the Cape in the 18th century. See dompas and influx control.
plot A small-holding.
Reef A name for the Rand or Witwatersrand; it referred to the
gold reefs that lay under its 100 km length from the town of
Springs in the east to Randfontein in the west.
Robben Island An island about 10 kilometres off Cape Town
and almost 8 km2, long used for the banishment of political prisoners
and until 1931 for the isolation of lepers and the insane.
It contained major defence installations during the Second World
War. From 1961 until 1990, Blacks convicted of political offences
against the apartheid regime were imprisoned there. Now a nature
reserve and museum.
Republic Day Annual public holiday on 31 May commemorating
the creation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961.
Russians A gang of blanketed Sotho men who terrorized
Johannesburg townships from the 1940s.
Security Police Section of the South African Police that dealt
with political matters. Also known as the Special Branch.
shaftsinking The process of digging the hole which will form
a mine-shaft, and lining it with the equipment necessary for
ventilation and the movement of men and ore.
sinker A category of miner skilled in shaftsinking.
slimes dump A heap of tailings, the residue after the extraction
of gold from crushed rock, rendered as a mud which gradually
dries out to form a solidified pile.
shebeen An informal place for the drinking of liquor, illegal
until 1980.
Soweto From "South Western Townships", Johannesburg’s
"location", the extensive series of townships in which African
residents of Johannesburg were required to live in terms of segregation
laws regulating African access to urban areas.
stage A multi-storied steel structure suspended on ropes from
the surface, which hangs above the shaft bottom during
shaftsinking and on which work the men who line the shaft
with concrete and equip it for mining.
Strijdom, J. H. (1893-1958) Uncompromising proponent of
White and particularly Afrikaner hegemony and supremacy.
Leader of the National Party and Prime Minister 1954-1958.
SWAPO South West Africa People’s Organisation.
Tant Afrikaans. Aunt, also a term of affection for an older woman.
total onslaught Term used by the National Party government
to describe what they perceived as an all-out offensive using
every weapon at their disposal, by foreign governments and
the liberation movement to undermine and ultimately destroy
the South African state.
township A segregated residential area for Africans or Coloureds,
a location.
Verwoerd, H. F. (1901 - 1966) The principal architect of
apartheid particularly in regard to geographical segregation and
the massive social engineering required for its achievement.
Prime Minister from 1958 until his assassination in 1966.
volk Afrikaans. A people or nation. In Afrikaner Christian-
Nationalism, the Afrikaner volk is an organic whole greater
than the sum of its individuals, created and chosen by God as
a divine instrument.
Image: Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Vavoom. When he turned...), 1990. Private collection, Los Angeles. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles. © Raymond Pettibon, 2002
Museum hours
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10 am to 8 pm Saturday
10 am to 3 pm Sunday and holidays
Closed Tuesday
MACBA
Plaça dels Àngels, 1
08001 Barcelona
Tel 34 93 412 08 10
Fax 34 93 412 46 02