Richard Pettibone at Leo Castelli - New York

Art in America, Nov, 2003 by Edward Leffingwell

Based on reproductions of paintings famous in part because of the frequency of their reproduction, the works by Richard Pettibone included in this show are smaller than the images they reflect, and often bear painted legends providing the titles of their models. Each brings forward the idea of Dada as a point of reference.

Pettibone refers to works created by artists who themselves have practiced a kind of appropriation, or have been subjected to the practice, and brings them together under the sign of their intellectual predecessors, Dada and Duchamp. Three small oil-on-canvas paintings recall Jasper Johns's Three Flags (1958), although Pettibone's oils differ in medium (Johns opted for encaustic) and size, characteristically small at 9 to 16 inches on their longer side. Carefully painted shadows acknowledge Johns's tiered relief, but after 9/11, Pettibone chooses a vertical orientation, following the etiquette for display of the flag in time of mourning.

Two of five small silkscreen-on-oil canvases after Warhol's "Most Wanted" paintings are inscribed "DA DA." The first is titled Andy Warhol, 'Most Wanted Man #11,' 1963, DADA (2002), a legend that appears directly on the painting, in the lower band of the broad margin that surrounds the image, followed by the felon's name, which also figures in the Warhol source. Warhol himself had cribbed the "most wanted" idea from Duchamp's 1923 "mug shot" of himself, which Warhol (as well as Pettibone) had seen on the poster for Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. In turn, Pettibone appropriated the "most wanted" composition for a poster promoting his own exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1965. For this 2003 exhibition at Castelli, Pettibone included a "mug-shot" painting depicting himself at the age of 32, executed at age 64, diminutive in scale, in the manner of his appropriations of the Warhol "most wanted" portraits.

There were Pettibone Mondrians included by way of reference to the appropriations of Sherrie Levine (and perhaps to the Mondrian dresses of Yves Saint Laurent), and several each of the "Elvis," "Marilyn," "Liz" and "Disaster" series of Warhol. Many are emblazoned with the Dada legend, deployed in the manner of concrete poetry, the letters ascending, traversing or tumbling across the painting surfaces, trumpeting replication in the name of the father. Duchamp appears, seated and in profile, in a key painting that is part of a small installation consisting also of a simple, handsome, hardwood shelf supporting five small, hewn miniatures of Brancusi's Endless Column. In his title, Pettibone appropriately identifies Duchamp simply as Brancusi's Dealer (1999-2000).