Raymond Pettibon Quotes
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I don't make art with grandiose delusions. I do know there are limits to what art is capable of. That makes it all the more appealing to me. And I can do as I will whenever I choose.
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I don't have extravagant tastes or expenses - like with cars, clothes, or whatever.
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It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.
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Back in the '80s, a lot of the images I used were from TV or from films on TV.
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I'd rather do anything than make commercial art. I didn't go to school for art. Making art has certain advantages for me but they would never be in commercial direction.
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Art can be a kind of therapeutic, or kind of a fantasy life, or wish fulfillment...o r creating this alternate universe. Art gives me the freedom to do that.
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I don't feel that I decided deliberately I'm going to write something and have it stand alone. Somewhere by the end I think it would probably revert to imagery.
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I don't drive often, because the parking makes it too much of a nuisance. And I could never go back to commuting or anything. I'd just get fed up with it.
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There's always a latent or inferred image in my writing. And I can almost always assume if I do a drawing that it will eventually have text.
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Art comes after the fact, as a witness to certain things that have happened.
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My work is more driven by the creative word. It's immersed in other writing and printed work, rather than drawn so much from life or past experience.
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Everybody has his own great ideas about what my art should be. But I can do whatever I like and there aren't many constraints to the way I work, whether I'm using a brush with ink or paint.
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I don't know if it's good to be stuck at one place. I'm probably too close to home on that. Because that can happen-where I'm not the best judge of my own work.
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I was making my work as transparent as possible, without equivocations, without calling attention to itself, without apology. There's a lot of conventions in the art world that are not to be transgressed, but my economy of means doesn't abide by those strictures. There's no reason to abide by them. I don't have any vested interest in it.
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No one can help me with my work. I think I do best when I am just left alone.
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Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're writing about. It's a sad state of affairs, but there's probably more veracity of reporting in my work than there is in the newspapers.
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There are instances where lines in my work are borrowed or stolen from sources, mainly from books, or they become my own versions. A lot of the writing is my own, too. But if someone were to take each drawing and trace it back to its source, most of them could be traced back to a book or a text.
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Whenever I reference something, it usually comes back at some point. I don't know why.
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When I see a train, I want to take it in my arms.
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If you don't use an image now you might have a place to put it in further down the line - and I have a lot of unfinished drawings.
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Sometimes there's a vacuum that has to be covered.
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It's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like.
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My drawing came out of editorial-style cartoons. Music was one thing and art was another, and there weren't really any standards for my art. My work was just drawings. They weren't done with any aspirations of becoming a part of punk scene. They weren't about punk. They were just collections of drawings, some of which I xeroxed and sold.
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It's possible to do your best work at your highest level without competing. I'm not anticompetition, but at an individual level, it can be degrading for both sides. And it doesn't have to be that way. I've done pretty well at getting past that sort of thing, and it's a relief not to have the rancor.