‘The Work Is Alive’: Watch Artists Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon Collaborate on Whimsical Large-Scale Drawings

Artists are often thought of as solitary workers. But some, like
the Canadian-born artist Marcel
Dzama, are drawn to collaboration.

“I enjoy working alone for about
a month, and then after that I really need to be around other
artists,” he said in an exclusive 2019 interview with Art21 for the “Extended Play” series (not
knowing that just a few months later he would be forced into
isolation along with everyone else).

In the video, Dzama describes how he met fellow artist Raymond Pettibon at a dinner thrown by
gallerist David Zwirner, who represents both of them. “We’re both a
little socially awkward,” Dzama says. “So we’d be drawing at the dinners… on
napkins over the table.”

Soon after meeting, the two began making collaborative drawings
in which they started working on opposite ends of a large sheet of
paper, meeting in the middle and overlapping.

While Dzama is known for his whimsical, detailed sketches of
hybrid creatures, which draw heavily from fairytales and other
myths, Pettibon’s work is more graphic, often using images of waves
and other hallmarks of California culture.

“I’ve definitely found that I
have this looseness to my work,” Dzama says of his collaboration with Pettibon.
“That gives it more of an energy. The work is alive and I’ve really
embraced it.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part
of Art21’s PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century,
below.

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art
in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch episodes
of other series like “New York Close Up” and “Extended Play” and
learn about the organization’s educational programs
at Art21.org.

The post ‘The Work Is Alive’: Watch Artists Marcel Dzama and
Raymond Pettibon Collaborate on Whimsical Large-Scale Drawings
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