The second, smaller gallery, painted a sleepy blue, contained some of Crumb’s more measured and less explicitly personal projects: illustrations for a Kafka biography, portraits of early twentieth-century bluegrass icons and decidedly twenty-first-century icons like Serena Williams and Stormy Daniels. Crumb can draw anything, remember anything, make a joke of anything-but, no matter how autobiographical he gets, he never explains himself. The same could be said for much of the other art in the show’s main gallery. By the time we reach the anticlimactic ending of “Footsy,” we sense that not even Crumb knows why he does what he does. Yet all this attention to detail can seem like a consolation prize in the absence of real self-awareness. In “Footsy” (1987), an eight-page comic that chronicles his years of clueless flirting, all the classic Crumb motifs are present: teenage traumas insecure males Amazons with massive rear ends and legs, catalogued with a fetishist’s care. He distorts them and plays them for uneasy laughs until, paradoxically, they start to feel like a kind of mask, hiding something still more essential and unsettling. The keywords in the titles of Crumb’s comics sound like a glossary of the hang-ups that have fueled his career: “Self-Loathing,” “Flesh & Blood,” “Jiz,” “Despair”.

Pronounce him a prophet and he drags you down the rabbit hole of his past.

Wince at his political incorrectness and he turns out to be a savvy political satirist. Sentimentalize him as a lovable nerd-underdog and he disappoints you with sheer meanness. Dismiss him as a peddler of smut and he makes a case for himself as heir to William Hogarth, James Gillray, and Thomas Nast (works by all three hung near the entrance). Crumb” and stocked with hundreds of tear sheets and spreads, provided ample opportunity to do-means constantly readjusting your expectations. 1943), a man so obsessed with his own id that one of his comic books is actually called “Id.” Studying his seven decades of work for the printed page-as the exhibition, titled “ Drawing for Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact by the Illustrious R. It would be hard to imagine a better way of displaying this artist’s jaunty, queasy comics-when he gets a paper cut, you could almost believe, he bleeds this yellow.īleeding seems like an apt metaphor for the nakedly confessional art of Robert Dennis Crumb (b. The main gallery was painted a shrill yellow that seemed cheerful but sickly, like a banana about to rot. Crumb exhibition that Robert Storr curated for David Zwirner deserves an award.

With his striking, detailed, fun and inviting black-and-white drawings, Crumb is unsurprisingly often described as one of America’s greatest cartoonists.The color scheme of the R. Though Crumb has been working in this mindset for decades, he remains extremely relevant to contemporary society. Its viewpoint comes from that of an outsider and someone contemptuous of mainstream socio-politics. What truly captures Crumb’s work and makes it resonate with so many is its perspective. Aline Kominsky-Crumb is a prolific comic book artist herself and is known to often collaborate with her husband. In the early 1990s, Crumb moved with his family, including his wife Aline, to France, where he continues to live today. He also developed books such as Fritz the Cat, which was later fashioned into a movie. Eventually, Crumb became a leading figure in the ‘underground movement’ of comics alongside publications such as the New York newspaper East Village Other. Zap grew to a point where other leading comic book artists also began to contribute. Through Zap, Crumb produced many now-notorious characters and storylines. From this, Crumb’s status as a collectable and greatly admired comic book artist was born. There his work was cherished by audiences, and as a result he produced the standalone comic book Zap. After returning to the US, Crumb jumped around states before settling in California, where he produced comics for the magazine Yarrowstalks. In 1962, he left home for Cleveland, Ohio, and started working as a greeting card artist. Crumb’s interest in cartoons arose when he was a child and would produce handmade comics with his brother, Charles.

R crumb drawings