"I'm not in awe of what most people would consider
heroes which would be someone of stature and power. In fact
those would tend to be people who I don’t respect at
all."
"The heroic has an epic scale to it. If you do look
at my baseball works, for instance, there is a kind of larger
than life attitude to a lot of it."
"Gumby is a kind of metaphor for how I work. He actually
goes into the book, goes into a biography or historical
book, and interacts with real figures from the past and
he becomes part of it."
"When I'm doing drawings of Vavoom I create a situation
of putting him in this epic, sublime, romantic landscape
and he is this little guy with a booming voice."
Are any of the characters in
your work ever heroes? Say the baseball players.
PETTIBON:
I'm not in awe of what most people
would consider heroes which would be someone of stature and
power. In fact those would tend to be people who I don’t
respect at all. The public has a kind of natural awe of them
that tends to be a mixture of fear, control, and violence.
You could say the loss of innocence in baseball began with
the fixing of the games in 1919 with the Black Socks World
Series Scandal.
Players—they all can’t live up to be a perfect model
hero like Steve Garvey who had an elementary school named
after him. But, that actually isn't a good example because
he had some pretty major scandals himself. But there's something
about athletes and even horse racing. Horses are athletes
of sorts too. They can have a heroic stature to me. People
usually tend to value an extreme one thing or another, whether
it's the intellectual against the athletic. Like the jocks
never mix with artists or the people who are studying physics.
I admire both, but in a moral sense. I don’t have any
expectation for anyone other than behaving decently to other
people. That's really not the true definition of a hero though.
The heroic has an epic scale
to it. If you look at my baseball works, for instance, there
is a kind of larger than life attitude to a lot of it. But
then not all the works are a pure adulation of the ball players.
I mean they go into some pretty sordid avenues. My drawings
dwell on that subject quite often as well.
ART:21:
You seem to like to mix the underbelly
and the philosophy.
PETTIBON:
Not always though. And not always
in the same drawing. You can look at a lot of my baseball
drawings and they don’t have that kind of a resentment
of most figures that you just automatically want to take them
down a notch. There's quite a few that aren't like that.
ART:21:
How far back does your interest
in baseball go?
PETTIBON:
Baseball has probably been my
favorite since I was a child. Some of the others, like horse
racing—that came in later—but football, basketball,
track and field... I'm not obsessed with any of those. The
reason why I keep coming back to certain images is probably
most often that there's a visual quality that works for me,
and that can be as simple as drawing horse races.
I think whether you are throwing the pitch or batting the
ball, you do have that sense of movement and for an artist
like myself whose work is about that one moment that can be
a reason I do that. But sports, and baseball in particular
in America, there's a lot more to it, there's a lot more nuances.
Not just in the game itself—but that's also important to.
My work on the subject does tap into some of the nuances of
the game—the pitching of the baseball for instance, or hitting
a baseball—but also it says a lot about what goes on off
the field as well about the society in general. It's kind
of a microcosm of the society as a whole.
ART:21:
It's rare that an artist gives
equal attention to both words and pictures. Could you have
accomplished what you wanted as a writer?
PETTIBON:
Yes, if I had to choose. But
the point is I don't. I mean I don't feel I'm diluting what
I'm saying by doing them both. Im not trespassing on one or
the other. To me it's natural. I don't feel cheated. But on
the other hand, I spend a lot more time writing than I do
drawing. I really wouldn't want to make that distinction or
feel the need to separate the two or make excuses. The fact
is I make work that requires both except in rare, rare cases.
ART:21:
Can we talk about the Gumby theme
in your work?
PETTIBON:
Gumby? To put it in general terms,
you’ll see in my work this tendency to take on some very
ridiculous subject. Possibly you can look at it as being so
far out there as to be kind of just a stray thought. Going
back to the heroic figures, you can speak about a wider area
of things that happen that puts the responsibility on the
shoulders of something like Gumby. It’s not done in any
sarcastic way. It’s not even meant to call attention
to itself. All I’m really asking is for you to look at
that with the same kind of respect that you would if it was
some important historical figure or Greek statue. Or the usual
subject matters that artists tend to use.
There’s also a reason why Gumby in particular works for
me so well. Because it does relate to the way I make work,
which has very much to do with words and reading in particular.
Gumby is a kind of metaphor
for how I work. He actually goes into the book, goes into
a biography or historical book, and interacts with real figures
from the past and he becomes part of it. He brings it to another
direction. And I tend to do that in my work. That’s why
Gumby is a particularly important figure to me. I have to
give credit to the figure of Gumby himself because it’s
not something that I’m raising up by his bootstraps and
putting in this high-art realm. Gumby’s creator, Art
Clokey, was a pretty brilliant guy, and it wasn’t like
the original Gumby cartoons weren’t worth paying attention
to and that I’m rescuing him from Saturday morning children’s
cartoons.
ART:21:
Is Gumby like an alter-ego?
PETTIBON:
Gumby represents an alter-ego
for my work as an artist. He represents me as an alter-ego.
There's actually a lot more to that figure then just 98 ounces
of clay or whatever. Art Clokey was into Zen Buddhism and
into a lot of pretty deep stuff for Saturday morning cartoons.
Clokey was a pretty hip figure in Los Angeles and in the counter-culture
of the ’60s and the ’50s. The beatniks and the hippies.
I have a lot of respect and affection for him. And for Pokey
as well, and Goo, Prikle, and even the Blockheads. One other
thing that I've never thought of, but that Gumby does for
me in some of his cartoons, is he goes into a biography or
historical book and he interacts with real figures from the
past. George Washington, or whatever. And I tend to do that
in my work and in my videos as well.
ART:21:
In some of the drawings Gumby
is paired with a vast landscape. It's like one guy against
the world.
PETTIBON:
But you know who does more for
me than Gumby—Vavoom. When I'm doing drawings of Vavoom
I create a situation of putting him in this epic, sublime,
romantic landscape and he is this little guy with a booming
voice. It's a perspective that has this panoramic scope to
it.
ART:21:
When did these characters become
part of your self or your repertoire?
PETTIBON:
I don't know the exact way that
works. Usually there's not any forethought. I don’t investigate
and find the right character that is going to express the
way I want to do things. But it starts inevitably with just
one drawing. It resonates and it keeps going from there. It
snowballs into a persona
that I keep going back to. But there isn't any design to it.
It establishes it's own kind of momentum and I don’t
really have to consciously think about it
I get asked a lot on this subject—"Why is that character
so important to you?" and so forth. It's not something
that I thought was especially important the first time I did
it. I may have drawn certain subjects numbers of times but
it doesn’t mean that I'm to this day obsessed with a
character or dwell on it as the subject matter. Or that I'm
aching to get back to it as soon as possible. I feel that
an artist has so much to see and he just kind of works on.
And you could probably say the same thing for just about any
subject or profession, including, well, really anything.
