I saw this fun little collection of miniature imitations of Andy Warhol and Frank Stella paintings by Richard Pettibone at last month’s Armory Show. The story behind these, I found out, was that in the 1960’s, Pettibone began producing mini-reproductions of artwork created by modern masters such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Frank Stella. In the case of the Warhols, Pettibone is appropriating images that were appropriations in their own right – meaning if Warhol can take someone’s photograph of Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao, splash some color on it and call it his own art, why can’t Pettibone take Warhol’s images, shrink them down to a different scale, and call them his own art?
Just to help give you a sense of the scale of these: the “Marilyn” image in the bottom left is 2 1/2 x 2 inches, and the flowers in the top left is only 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 inches!
