Raymond Pettibon (American, b. 1957)
Untitled (However Vast), 2007
Print
33.375 x 25.125 in
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon ’95
However vast the “outer space” may be, yet with all its sidereal distances it hardly
bears comparison with the dimensions, with the depth dimensions of our inner being, which does
not even need the spaciousness of the universe to be within itself almost unfathomable. Thus, if
the dead, if those who are to come, need an abode, what refuge could be more agreeable and
appointed for them than this imaginary space?
I rarely find words to be integral to an illustration, but here they are compositionally and conceptually core to Pettibon’s design. If anything, the bird of patchwork wings and branchy talons is the explanation for the red letters. More obviously, the smaller bird wilting in the grasp of the larger bird bends to the circle of life. The intensity of the red — a life force — is exchanged between bodies. More subtly, could Pettibon be suggesting that the life cycle rolls on through this imaginary realm he claims has no less splendor than galaxies? A space adorned, not by wandering planets and fixed stars, but by the attention of the soul?
The notion that the dead may live on through memory is an old one. But what is gained at the end of memory?
Does memory, like matter, merely recycle? Does our collective memory carry on just to feed the festering new beginnings of memory to come? Or will it leave a stain, having reached a pinnacle of richness and maturity?
Is attention a creative act? And what “outer space” could be richer than what our creativity has attributed to it, an attention that falls like light does upon an otherwise static blankness?
Untitled (However Vast) brings me to a space of attention. And though I am a newcomer, stammering with questions, I feel allowed to explore.
-Molly Smith ’24