No Title (With the light...)
Raymond Pettibon
American, born 1957
n.d.
A hand-drawn work in ink and colored ink on paper that arranges nine comic-like panels of mushroom‑cloud “thought balloons” filled with sardonic, fragmented captions, using the language and rhythm of comics to collapse cartoon speech and apocalyptic imagery and critique mass culture and anxiety.
What hits you first is the uneasy marriage of delicate red hand‑lettering and airy cloud shapes against dense black panels, so the page reads like a comic whose thought bubbles have become nuclear blasts—simultaneously witty, ominous, and relentlessly verbal.
Pettibon helped bring the raw immediacy of underground comics and punk lyricism into contemporary art, demonstrating how hand‑drawn text and simple graphic motifs can expose political, psychological, and cultural anxieties.
Medium
Ink and colored ink on paper
Dimensions
25 1/2 x 19 3/4" (64.8 x 50.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift from the Collection of Patricia and Morris Orden
Accession
432.2003
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
