Raymond Pettibon. Underground

Alongside the exhibition Philip Guston. The Irony of History, the Musée national Picasso-Paris is devoting an exhibition to American artist Raymond Pettibon, with the support of David Zwirner Gallery. Through seventy drawings and around ten fanzines, the exhibition explores the ironic and unsettling universe of this major contemporary artist.

A self-taught artist born in 1957 in Tucson, Arizona, Raymond Pettibon emerged in the late 1970s on the Californian punk-rock scene, designing album covers for the band Black Flag, founded by his brother Greg Ginn. He also began exhibiting and self-publishing his early drawings, which adopted the DIY aesthetic of comics, flyers, and fanzines characteristic of the punk movement. Pettibon’s drawings draw from a wide range of sources, including literature, art history, popular culture, religion, politics, and sports.

Resolutely anti-authoritarian, Pettibon’s work paints a caustic portrait of a nihilistic and violent American society through biting images accompanied by explosive inscriptions. Marked by the end of the hippie dream and the return of conservatism, his work is intentionally disturbing and unruly, relentlessly questioning the American dream—just as Philip Guston, whom Pettibon admires, did in his time. It places visitors in an uncomfortable position, prompting them to reconsider their own values.