Robert Crumb

 

 

 


I have long been a fan of Robert Crumb's work, for several reasons. Firstly, I really like the sort of bristly aesthetic of his drawings and that despite the fact that he has actually had clear 'phases' where his style has changed or evolved, it is always recogniseable as his own. Secondly, I kind of like the fact that he is an incredibly skilled draughtsman who creates technically superb drawings, but uses his talents to create images which have largely perverse and offensive themes, and often contain purposefully low brow humour. I find an ironic comicality in this trait.
I admire his balls to the wall approach to satire, creating work which is so incredibly grotesque in some of its themes (and graphically), and yet remain confident in its ability to satirise popular culture, and often America and its percieved values and patriotism. I think its easy to find his work offensive in a cheap and smutty way, but in the context of its inception (the 'underground comix' movement of which he was such an integral part) it holds up as something truly authentic and important; a voice raised in opposition to America's growing appetite for quick fix culture, tawdry goods and products, and general commercialism. 

"Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America." (Robert Crumb)

"As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them."

His work is also often self referential or autobiographical, tying together his cynical sense of humour, existential neuroses and self deprecating perspective into a rather scornful analysis of himself and his life. It's as if he is his own psychiatrist. I find it incredible that he puts such detailed accounts of such personal aspects of himself and his life out into the world. It takes real balls to publish that much intimate detail if one is as strange as he is, even if it is comedic, and I know I would never be able to do it myself. This is another reason I applaud his practice.  

How he makes work and practical elements of his practice

"I use the old Strathmore vellum surface paper, which is the best paper you can get in the Western world for ink line drawing. It has a good, hard surface." (Robert Crumb)

"Throwaway pens are no good - I never liked them. I've tried them all." (Robert Crumb)

"With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process." (Robert Crumb)

"Some things I won't do for any amount of money. Like for instance, there's a couple of CEOs of very large corporations that offered me lots of money to do special pictures for them. And I just refused to do that. Even if it was a million dollars I wouldn't do it." (Robert Crumb) 

It seems his work is always self driven, his success therefore all the more impressive in that he always creates work for himself first. This, I believe is what makes it so convincing. There is a definite sense he believes in everything he produces, although on the other hand he is so intensely prolific and just seems to draw impulsively, suggesting he decides what to do with certain work after he's created it. This was the case for many characters he came up with in the 60s (e.g. 'Mr Natural'), a strange new, more cartoonish style born from an LSD induced haze which lasted around two months. 

Where does his work exist?

Everywhere. Since he began producing work for the 'Underground Comix' movement in the mid 60s he has not stopped and his work is now highly regarded and in many spheres of the art world. He has subsequently had numerous exhibitions all over the world, two documentaries made about him and even a stage play based on one of his characters, as well as the plethora of comics and books which he himself has produced or which have been put together about him and his work (his most ambitious project perhaps being his illustrated version of the entire Book of Genesis.

I had a massive phase of trying to emulate his densely cross-hatched style in my own work a year or so ago but have since drifted away from trying to do that, I often lack the patience to create work like that and my work would probably have ended up becoming very derivative. In another sense I feel that Crumb's work is so idiosyncratic, both thematically and stylistically, that taking influence from it would always become too obvious and so, whilst he remains one of my favourite illustrators and comic artists, he is one who's presence is felt too strongly for me to follow the example of.


"I often think of the truth like the skin of an onion- you peel it back and what do you find? Another skin. And beneath that, another and another. Truth always has behind it, a more fundamental truth. A prime measure of an artist's work is how "true" it is. A dumb cartoon is empty, without originality. It offers cliches- surface without content. Crumb speaks reality and truth. If you are a discerning Crumb reader, if your interest goes beyond "the dirty parts," then you know him intimately. You know Crumb's life- his happiness, his disasters. You've gone deep inside his brain, into his sex, hate, love, dreams. He lays it all bare. He probes, he delves, he peels back the layers." - Harvey Kurtzman (creator of 'Mad Magazine')