Raymond Pettibon, as Parisian as a McDonald’s french fry, is an odd choice for the opening of David Zwirner’s Paris outpost. His drawings depict the trends and totems of American life—rock stars, baseball players, surfers, and gangsters—with a hand trained in chillness by the So-Cal scene of 70s punk (he grew up in Hermosa Beach, CA). Cartoon simplicity casts each image as an American icon, but with a chaos of references Pettibon toys with mass-culture, symbolized by, say, Mcdonald’s golden arches, and winks at claims of American populism. —C.J.F.

Raymond Pettibon: Frenchette was featured in the October 12, 2019 issue of Air Mail. Read on