Pettibon Poster

Raymond Pettibon was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1957, but spent his childhood in Hermosa Beach, California. After graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in economics, Pettibon received his BFA in 1977. His artistic career began to take off in the early 1980s. During this time, he produced album artwork and posters for many punk rock bands such as Black Flag and Sonic Youth.

Many of Pettibon’s prints, paintings and mixed media works incorporate harsh and equivocal text and imagery. While some of the text is borrowed, others are Pettibon’s original words. His style echoes that of comics and includes motifs from youth culture, politics, sports, and celebrity. While his early works were completed in black and white, often with the use of India ink, later in his career Pettibon began incorporating color in his use of paint, collage, watercolor, gouache, and pencil. He is known for his edgy one-liners and raw depiction of youth culture and the punk scene.

Pettibon’s most recent works critique contemporary controversies such as the Iraq War and American politics. Pettibon is currently living and working in New York City.

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Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

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