![]() His sketchbook subjects ranged from friends to girlfriends, strangers in public places and people based on magazine photos. Some have called Crumb’s comics a comment on the American condition, but they’re also a snapshot into his personal outlook. There are also his Self-Loathing Comics from the 1990s, drawings of Artie Shaw, a strip based on Philip K Dick and a rejected New Yorker cover of a queer couple from 2009.Ĭrumb’s comics have often been a critique of modern society, with waves of nihilism to sarcasm and disillusionment, not to mention drug hallucinations and the ongoing battle between 9-5ers and bohemians, many of which were his core readership in the 1960s and 1970s. Photograph: Kerry McFate/David Zwirner GalleryĪlongside the sketchbooks on view, the exhibit features Crumb’s Zap magazine covers, his famed Mr Natural, which was critical to the underground comix movement of the 1960s. I was socially alienated and had a lot of time on my hands.” “I also used them as diaries, filling many pages just with text long rambling self-reflections. “I drew from life, from photos and from my imagination,” said Crumb. It was the 1970s, a time when he drew religiously. It’s enough.”įor decades, Crumb carried a sketchbook with him everywhere he went, something he learned from Leonardo da Vinci. ![]() ![]() “So yeah, I don’t draw much any more,” he said. “Finally, it became nearly impossible to draw anything that might be offensive to someone out there, and that’s where I’m at today.”īut there is life after sketchbooks, for Crumb. “I became more self-conscious and inhibited,” he said. I was crazy enough not to think about the consequences too much.”īut things changed when Crumb received criticism. “I vented my feelings in my artwork, in my comics. “When I was young, I had a lot of anger towards women, as well as towards men and toward human society in general,” he says. I could only stop myself from acting on it, and therein lies Freud’s Civilizations and its Discontents.”Ĭrumb’s superwoman-esque drawings were not always meant to empower. It was not something I could stop myself from feeling. The sight of a woman with a large ass and strong legs instantly electrified me. “Yes, I’m guilty of looking at women as ‘sex objects’, I’ve done it thousands of times over the course of my life. “I’m sure I must’ve used the term ironically, a sort of self-accusation,” he ponders. When asked to elaborate, Crumb doesn’t recall drawing it. Another has a woman with the words “Sex Object” floating above her head. There are drawings of acrobatic women with Kardashian-sized rear ends, sleazy businessmen smiling behind cigars and one sketch of a rabbit man slapping a woman across the face. This exhibition, curated by Robert Storr, focuses on Crumb’s sketchbooks from the 1970s. Photograph: Kerry McFate/Courtesy the artist, Paul Morris and David Zwirner “We have a kind of ‘open marriage’, bohemian artists and libertines that we are.” “There are a lot of drawings in this show of other women I’ve been involved with intimately, both before and during my relationship with Aline,” said Crumb. While pointing out the pretty portraits of his wife, Crumb reveals his other lovers, too. But not everything has changed since the Summer of Love. He’s referring to Aline Kominsky-Crumb, his wife of 41 years, a cartoonist in her own right and collaborator. Success and the love of real women helped me a lot. “Fortunately for me, I found a way to express this inner turbulence in my comics, otherwise I might’ve ended up in jail or in a mental institution. “When I was young, I was just obsessed with sexual desire, fantasizing about sex, masturbation, trying to figure out how to get laid. It’s a marked difference from a time when his work was typified by thick-thighed pin-up women and even in his 2016 series Art & Beauty, he featured a bathroom mirror selfie of a 21-year-old model who voluntarily emailed him nudes. It helps that I’m now 75 years old and am no longer a slave to a raging libido.” “I try not to even think about women any more. ![]() “I don’t even look at women any more,” said Crumb in New York. Perhaps it was the result of the #MeToo movement? ![]() The Philadelphia-born artist was a key figure in the counterculture movement in San Francisco during the sexual revolution and has now decided to stop showcasing the female form. Showcasing old comic books from the 1960s to sketchbooks, a cartoon about Donald Trump and a portrait of Stormy Daniels, it traces Crumb’s path as pervert in chief – which marks the end of an era. Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact by the Illustrious R Crumb is his latest exhibition, which runs until 19 April at David Zwirner gallery in New York. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |