29 Jan
For the love of Pee-Wee
Steven Heller Collection: Posters and Prints
Here’s a 1981 print from highly influential graphic artist (and longtime SVA instructor) Gary Panter advertising Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee stage show in Los Angeles. The show was the springboard for Reubens’ feature film, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and later his acclaimed series, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Panter was the head set designer for the TV show and this early poster displays his trademark jagged lines and surreal sensibility. Now scream real loud when you hear the secret word…
Comments
21 Oct
Hello:
I attended a couple extension classes held by Gary Panter in the early Eighties at the recommendation of an old art teacher of mine.
In 1981 I was a hick from the sticks (a longhair with Jordache jeans knock-offs from the coastal town of Redondo Beach, 20 miles Southwest) when I arrived one night at the legendary Otis Art Institute on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The L.A. Punk rock scene was raging at the time and was evidenced in the magenta mohawks, dyed black hair and vampire pale white skin of the other students in Panter’s “Cartoon Illustration” class.
I was immediately self-conscious about my alien status, but regardless of their imposing looks, the others treated me with total equity (perhaps they thought I was making a reactionary fashion statement).
Gary, at 32 years old, looked something like a X-rated Buddy Holly meets James Dean. He was a tall lanky soft-spoken Southern (Texas) gentleman with a jet black (later on magenta)with stiger side burns, top heavy crew cut, flimsy white t-shirt, inside out and cuffed Levi 501’s, with black, steel-toed construction shoes—with an ever present Coke in hand (he didn’t do coffee of drugs).
It was during the period that I took his classes that I gave in and finally cut my hair (after nearly having it cut off by some violent punks with a broken beer bottle at a Dead Kennedy’s concert), so you might say I gave into “punk peer pressure”.
There wasn’t much if any instruction in Gary’s class, but the opportunity to be in the presence of a genius like him was worth the admission price alone.
There was a lot of sharing of information on cultural matters, and nightly battle stories from class punkers fresh off the front line.
Best of all is that Gary was showing us all his work-in-progress from the Pee Wee Herman Show (in fact, we were the first to see the very poster above!) and seeking our advice on it.We also got to watch him knock-off a 2X2” spot illustration ($500.00) for accompanying the last page text of the New Yorker during class time!
His touch with the fountain pen was unduplicatable(word?)
Every week he’d have all the student start a comic strip, and pass it around for everyone—including him—to contribute a panel. This means we’d all have several beautiful little Gary Panter drawings of the characters we contrived.
There were two class “field trips” that I recall. One was to Captain Beefheart at the Whiskey (his comeback tour!), and the other was Throbbing Gristle show somewhere in a Santa Monica hall.
He did teach another class at Otis in Life drawing and one evening he casually asked if anyone knew a quadraplegic person who would model for it! Even stranger, someone responded with an affirmative!
Panter’s buddy, a rock music critic and cartoonist for local givaway papers the Reader and the L.A. Weekly (he was also so doing a paper route for one of them Panter informed us), Matt Groening dropped by the class to hang out one night. The next time I heard about him was on the title credits for the Simpson’s.
26 Oct
Thanks for your great story, Patrick. Panter still teaches at SVA and is much revered.