American painter. After studying painting at University of California, Los Angeles, between 1970 and 1973, he transferred to the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, CA, where he graduated with an MFA in 1976. His early works are often obscure and consciously difficult for the viewer to untangle, using a very personalized iconography, as in From Venom to Serum (1982; see 1996 exh. cat., ill. 2). In 1985 Pittman was shot by an intruder and badly wounded, the experience prompting a change in his work towards a more open, readable use of imagery. His subsequent paintings consider American identity and history, often incorporating motifs from folk art and popular culture, for example An American Place (1986; Los Angeles, CA, Mus. Contemp. A.). In part, his interest in this complex history comes from his own hybrid identity, which he identifies as both Latino and Anglo, Catholic and Presbyterian. Another strand in his work that became more forceful was his assertion of the gay male experience, as in This Wholesomeness, Beloved and Despised, Continues Regardless (1990; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.). His later work, including the series A Decorated Chronology of Insistence and Resignation (1992–5), are heavily layered, technically brilliant paintings incorporating a wide range of styles. They explore the cycle of life and death, with images of eroticism and violence intermingled in characteristically brash and decorative surfaces, as in Untitled #9 (A Decorated Chronology of Insistence and Resignation) (1992–3; New York, Whitney).
Catherine M. Grant
From Grove Art Online
© 2009 Oxford University Press