Richard Pettibone is an inventive artist who helped establish the conceptual art movement known as “Appropriation”.
While creating Pop-style sculptures with his skills as a miniature enthusiast, Pettibone took on the idea of creating small paintings and sculptures based on the images he saw in art publications such as Art in America.
Artists like Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Johns were already using celebrity photos, comic book illustrations, and the American flag respectively to co-opt or appropriate popular iconography, thus making a statement about what could be used as fine art. Pettibone’s simple appropriation of the other artists’ images was re-enforcing this concept by acknowledging that the paintings themselves had entered pop culture status. (If a soup can was Pop art, a painting of a soup can was Pop art, then a painting of a painting of a soup can was Pop art etc.)
The fact that Pettibone made each small painting exactly the size it was reproduced in the art magazines (sometimes as small as an inch) was a somewhat Duchampian statement of not copying a painting, but copying an image of a painting.
Lot Information:
Richard Pettibone
Roy Lichtenstein. Tex. 1962.
1964
Oil on canvas
Pencil marked verso “#29”
4.5″ x 4.5″
Estimate $40,000 – $60,000
To be offered in May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction
Richard Pettibone
Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1971
1971
Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas with artist frame
Signed and dated on the frame verso “R. Pettibone ’71”
1.75″ x 1.75″
Estimate $7,000 – $9,000
To be offered in May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction
Richard Pettibone
Roy Lichtenstein. Golf Ball. 1962.
1965
Oil on canvas
11 3/8″ x 10 3/8″
Estimate $35,000 – $45,000
To be offered in May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction
Richard Pettibone
Stella
1966
Oil on canvas
Signed verso “Richard Pettibone 1966”
6 1/8″ x 7 1/8″
Estimate $10,000 – $12,000
To be offered in May 6, 2012 Modern Art & Design Auction
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