Raymond Pettibon at New Museum, wielding an art mightier than the sword

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter
His Jesus drawings were made ever more interesting by the handwritten phrases beside them such as: "No pool of Alpine fountain at its source was purer."
NEW YORK---Never has verbiage, generated by advertising, the entertainment industry and mouthy politicians, been so present and pervasive in everyday life, seeping from smartphones, spewing from flat screens. And few artists have more cannily predicted and reflected, not to mention contributed to, this phenomenon than Raymond Pettibon, whose career retrospective, with more than 700 annotated drawings and paintings, fills three floors and the lobby of the New Museum. Nearly every piece in “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work” is dominated by an image. Most are done in pen and ink, and sometimes paint, on notebook-size sheets of paper in a wired, graphic style. But many of the images — of Joan Crawford, or Jesus, or a surfer, or an explosion. [link]

The New Museum: “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work” (Through April 9, 2017); 235 Bowery; New York, NY; (212)219-1222; newmuseum.org
Surfing has been a recurrent theme for Mr. Pettibon. From left, “No Title (Think, How Were),” 2011; “No Title (As to Me),” 2015; and “No Title (Let Me Say),” 2012. Credit Philip Greenberg for The New York Times