Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb

Pastel portrait of Robert Crumb by Christian Lessenich, 2009.
Born Robert Dennis Crumb
August 30, 1943 (1943-08-30) (age 67)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality American
Area(s) Artist, Writer, Cartoonist, Musician
Pseudonym(s) R. Crumb
Notable works Zap Comix
Keep on Truckin'
Fritz the Cat
Mr. Natural
Official website

Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943) — known as R. Crumb — is an American artist and illustrator recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.

Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded as its most prominent figure. Though one of the most celebrated of comic book artists, Crumb's entire career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry. One of his most recognized works is the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, which became a widely distributed fixture of pop culture in the 1970s. Others are the characters Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural.

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991.

Contents

Life and career

Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is of English and Scottish ancestry, and is related to former US president Andrew Jackson on his mother's side.[1] His father, Charles, was a career officer in the United States Marine Corps; his mother, Beatrice, a housewife who reportedly abused diet pills and amphetamines. Their marriage was unhappy and the children — Robert, Charles, Maxon, Sandra and Carol — were frequent witnesses to their parents' loud arguments. Crumb's first job as an artist was for the Topps company. He was hired by Woody Gelman and drew illustrations for an internal publication that offered premiums to gum salesman such as toasters and blenders.[2] In the mid 1960s, Crumb left home and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he designed greeting cards for the American Greetings corporation, and met a group of young bohemians including Buzzy Linhart, Liz Johnston, and others. Johnston introduced him to his future wife, Dana Morgan. He befriended another Cleveland resident, Harvey Pekar, and eventually contributed artwork to early issues of American Splendor. In 1967, encouraged by the reaction to some drawings he had published in underground newspapers, including Philadelphia's Yarrowstalks, Crumb moved to San Francisco, California, the center of the counterculture movement. Crumb, with the backing of Don Donahue published the first issue of his Zap Comix on January 18, 1968 printed by Beat poet Charles Plymell.[3] After years in California, and a second marriage to Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Crumb and family moved to a small village near Sauve in southern France, where he now resides.

Important Works

Crumb is a prolific artist and contributed to many of the seminal works of the underground comics movement in the 1960s, including being a founder of Zap Comics, contributing to all 16 issues, and additionally contributing to the East Village Other and many other publications including a variety of one-off and anthology comics. During this time, inspired by psychedelics and cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s, he introduced a wide variety of characters that became extremely popular, including Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. Sexual themes surfaced in his later work in the 1960s, often shading into scatological and pornographic comics. In the early 1970s, he contributed to the Arcade anthology, and in the 1980s, to Weirdo (which he created and co-edited). As he got older, his work became more autobiographical. He frequently collaborates with his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, on comics. His complete work and selections from his sketchbooks have been published by Fantagraphics[4] in seventeen volumes of comics and ten volumes of sketches to date.

The Book of Genesis

In 2009, he published his illustrated graphic novel version of the Book of Genesis.[5][6][7] The book includes annotations explaining his reactions to Biblical stories. It is reported on NPR in October 2009, that it was a four-year effort and does not rewrite any part of the text. Crumb did extensive research in the earlier language versions of the text to support the interpretations. It contains all 50 chapters of Genesis and comes with a warning on its cover: "Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors."[8][9][10]

Influences and critical response

A peer in the underground comics field, Victor Moscoso, commented about his first impression of Crumb's work, in the mid-1960s, before meeting Crumb in person: "I couldn't tell if it was an old man drawing young, or a young man drawing old."[11] Robert Crumb’s cartooning style has drawn on the work of cartoon artists from earlier generations, including Billy De Beck (Barney Google), C.E. Brock (an old story book illustrator), Gene Ahern’s comic strips, George Baker (Sad Sack), the Merrie Melodies animated characters of the 1930s, Sidney Smith (The Gumps), Rube Goldberg, E.C. Segar (Popeye) and Bud Fisher (Mutt and Jeff). Crumb has cited Carl Barks, who illustrated Disney's "Donald Duck" comic books and John Stanley (Little Lulu) as formative influences on his narrative approach, as well as Harvey Kurtzman.

Crumb has also cited his extensive LSD use as a factor that led him to develop his unique style.[12][13]

Crumb's comic artwork has elicited harsh commentary from critics. He frequently draws pictures of overly sexual women in subservient roles, as well as "darky" afro-Americans among other stereotypes. Numerous critics cite his overly sexualized women, calling him "the chief sexist of underground comics."[14] Other critics, such as African American cartoonist and author Charles Johnson, claim that Crumb's comics are inherently racist because of their racially stereotyped portrayals of minorities.[15]

Crumb remains a prominent figure, as both artist and influence, within the alternative comics milieu, Crumb is hailed as a genius by such comic book talents as Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, and Chris Ware. In the fall of 2008, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia hosted a major exhibition of his work, which was favorably reviewed in the New York Times[13] and in the Philadelphia Inquirer.[16]

Professional collaborations

In the early 1980s, Crumb collaborated with writer Charles Bukowski on a series of comic books, featuring Crumb's art and Bukowski's writing.

Among his less sexuality- and satire-oriented, comparably highbrow works since the 1990s, especially Crumb's collaboration with David Zane Mairowitz, the illustrated, part-comic biography and bibliography Introducing Kafka, aka Kafka for beginners, is well-known and favorably received, which, due to its popularity, was republished as R. Crumb's Kafka.

A friend of Harvey Pekar, Crumb illustrated many of the award winning American Splendor comics by Pekar including the first issues (1986).

Crumb collaborates with his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, on many strips and comics, including Self-Loathing Comics and work published in The New Yorker.

Crumb's work also appeared in "Nasty Tales", a 1970s British underground comic. The publishers were acquitted in a celebrated 1972 obscenity trial at the Old Bailey in London; the first such case involving a comic. Giving evidence at the trial, one of the defendants said of Crumb: "He is the most outstanding, certainly the most interesting, artist to appear from the underground, and this (Dirty Dog) is Rabelaisian satire of a very high order. He is using coarseness quite deliberately in order to get across a view of social hypocrisy.."[17][18]

A theatrical production based on his work was produced at Duke University in the early 1990s. Directed by Johnny Simons, and co-starring Avner Eisenberg and Nicholas de Wolff, the development of the play was supervised by Crumb, who also served as set designer, drawing larger-than-life representations of some of his most famous characters all over the floors and walls of the set.

"Devil Girl Choco-Bars"

In 1994, Kitchen Sink Konfections, a branch of comic book publisher Kitchen Sink Enterprises, used his character Devil Girl to promote chocolate candy bars named "Devil Girl Choco-Bar."[19] Kitchen Sink folded in 1998 and the candy bars, of which nearly a half-million were reportedly sold, are no longer in production, but the wrappers, display boxes and advertising signs are now sought-after collectibles. A second product, "Devil Girl Hot Kisses," a hot cinnamon flavored candy, was also produced. It is back in production by Cheesy Products.[20][21][22]

Musical projects

Crumb has frequently drawn comics about his musical interests in blues, country, bluegrass, cajun, French Bal-musette, jazz, big band and swing music from the 1920s and 30's, and they also heavily influenced the soundtrack choices for his band mate Zwigoff's 1994 Crumb documentary. He was a member of the band R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders. Crumb often plays mandolin with Eden and John's East River String Band and has drawn covers for them including 2009's "Drunken Barrel House Blues" and 2008's "Some Cold Rainy Day".

Album covers

Crumb has illustrated many album covers, including most prominently Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company and the compilation album The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead.

In 2008 ,Crumb created a new LP/CD cover for Eden and John's East River String Band, a New York based duo that play country blues from the 1920s and 1930s, titled Some Cold Rainy Day. In 2009, he did another cover, for Drunken Barrel House Blues.

Also in 2009, he did the artwork for a 10-CD anthology of French traditional music (compiled by Guillaume Veillet for Frémeaux & Associés).[23]

Additional information

At least three TV or theatrical documentaries are dedicated to Crumb, not counting numerous reports running 10 minutes and below:

In 2006, Crumb brought legal action against Amazon.com after the website used a version of his widely recognizable "Keep On Truckin'" character. The case is expected to be settled out of court.

Also in 2006, Sirius Radio host Howard Stern revealed that Crumb had contacted his show, offering to swap some of his art prints in exchange for a subscription to Sirius that he could listen to in France. However, it was not Robert Crumb who contacted the Howard Stern Show. Crumb is not a listener of the show and claims that he has never even heard it. The actual caller was his brother-in-law Alex, who moved to France from New York and deals in R. Crumb prints.

R. Crumb's Sex Obsessions, a collection of his most personally revealing sexually-oriented drawings and comic strips, was released from TASCHEN publishing in November 2007.

R. Crumb contributes regularly to The New Yorker and Mineshaft magazine. In 2009 Mineshaft began serializing "Excerpts From R. Crumb's Dream Diary".[24]

Awards and honors

Crumb has received several accolades for his work, including a nomination for the Harvey Special Award for Humor in 1990 and the Angoulême Grand Prix in 1999.

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Crumb, Robert Crumb Family Comics. Last Gasp, 1998. ISBN 0867194278, where he discusses his ancestry at length in a hand-written essay.
  2. ↑ Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, p. 128, Dave Jamieson, 2010, Atlantic Monthly Press, imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc., New York, NY, ISBN 978-0-8021-1939-1
  3. ↑ Hand printed first issue of ZAP Comics
  4. ↑ http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=116&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62&vmcchk=1&Itemid=62
  5. ↑ Gustines, George Gene (October 23, 2009). "Graphic Books Best-Seller List" (book review). New York Times. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/graphic-books-best-seller-list-12/?scp=2&sq=Genesis%20Crumb&st=cse. Retrieved October 27, 2009. 
  6. ↑ R. Crumb on Genesis (slide show)
  7. ↑ Bloom, H., "Yahweh Meets R. Crumb", The New York Review of Books, 56/19 (December 3, 2009)
  8. ↑ Crumb's 'Genesis,' A Sexy Breasts-And-Knuckles Affair
  9. ↑ Heer, Jeet. Word Made Fresh: R. Crumb gives visual form to the first book of the Bible. Sep/Oct/Nov 2009. Bookforum. http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/016_03/4342. Retrieved 2009-11-04.  (access requires registration)
  10. ↑ Robert Crumb Interview from The Guardian Newspaper (UK).
  11. ↑ The Comics Journal #246 http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=267&Itemid=48
  12. ↑ The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book at p. 67
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Mr. Natural Goes to the Museum, September 5, 2008, New York Times
  14. ↑ BookForum.Com, September 3, 2009, by Jeet Heer
  15. ↑ ImageText, September 3, 2009, "Racial Imagery, Racism, Individualism, and Underground Comix"
  16. ↑ Out from underground, August 31, 2008, Philadelphia Inquirer
  17. ↑ http://www.funtopia.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/friends/nastytalestrial2.htm
  18. ↑ "International Times" journal, No.147, February 9, 1973, pp.17-20.
  19. ↑ Devil Bottom JPG
  20. ↑ [1]
  21. ↑ Gender Politics of Candy
  22. ↑ [2]
  23. ↑ http://www.fremeaux.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=128&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=1149&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=0
  24. ↑ Palmieri, Gioia. "Update". Mineshaft Magazine. http://www.mineshaftmagazine.com/index.html. Retrieved 2009-09-05. 

Further reading

External links

Family of Robert Crumb

Charles Crumb · Maxon Crumb ·

Aline Kominsky-Crumb · Sophie Crumb