Robert Crumb

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Robert Crumb (born August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an 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 comics 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’ drawing, which became widely distributed fixture of pop-culture in the 1970's.

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Ohio to California

In the mid 1960's, Crumb lived in 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. Liz introduced him to his first wife, Dana Morgan Crumb. Encouraged by the reaction to some drawings he had published in underground newspapers, including Philadelphia's Yarrowstalks, Crumb moved in 1967 to San Francisco, California, the center of the counterculture movement. Crumb published the first issue of his Zap Comix in early 1968.

Image:Zapcomix1.jpg

Crumb employed detailed early 20th century cartoon styles in satirical stories that were sexually and politically outrageous, particularly in the context of a comic book. He soon attracted a number of other artists who were excited by the possibilities of publishing countercultural comic books. Crumb shared the pages of later issues of Zap with such artists as Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams, Harvey Kurtzman and Gilbert Shelton.

In the pages of Zap, the East Village Other, OZ magazine, Gothic Blimp Works, Motor City, Yellow Dog, and scores of other comix and counterculture publications, Crumb created characters that became counterculture icons; the best-known are "Mr. Natural" and "Fritz the Cat". Crumb's work was suddenly in great demand, and Crumb himself became an anti-establishment icon, a figure who genuinely resisted "selling out". His friend Janis Joplin hired him to draw the artwork for the cover of her band's album Cheap Thrills, but Crumb rejected an offer to illustrate an album cover for the Rolling Stones because he hated the band's music. Animation director Ralph Bakshi made a feature-length animated film of Fritz the Cat (the first animated film to garner an "X" rating), and the film was a box-office hit. Crumb disliked the film so much that he killed the fictional cat in his comics (an ostrich-woman stabbed the pompous movie-star Fritz in the head with an ice pick), and has since refused other lucrative offers to base films on his work.

Image:Cheapthrills.jpeg

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Style

Robert Crumb’s cartooning style draws 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 work, E.C. Segar (Popeye), and Bud Fisher (Mutt and Jeff). Crumb has cited Carl Barks, who drew early Disney "Duck" cartoons, and John Stanley (Little Lulu) as formative influences on his narrative approach, as well as Harvey Kurtzman, the comics artist who was also the founding editor of Mad.

Crumb's comic artwork has elicited sharply divided commentary from readers and critics. He has been hailed as one of the century's greatest artists, and compared to literary satirists Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain. Art critic Robert Hughes has likened Crumb to Dürer, Breughel and Goya. Others, including comics historian Trina Robbins and feminist Deirdre English denounce Crumb's work as socially degrading and emotionally immature misogynistic pornography. Crumb has admitted he has an abnormal "fear of women."

Crumb created and edited the Weirdo alternative comics anthology in the early 1980s, and he remains a prominent figure, as both artist and influence, within the alternative comics milieu. While Crumb's career has unfolded outside the mainstream comic book publishing industry, he has done both covers and multi-page comics (mostly about his current life in France) for New Yorker magazine.

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Legacy

Harvey Pekar was a friend who shared Crumb's love of 78 RPM records. Pekar solicited Crumb's help to illustrate an autobiographical series of comics about Pekar's own life called American Splendor and later made into a movie of the same name. The role of Crumb himself in that film was portrayed by James Urbaniak.

A theatrical production based on his work was produced at Duke University in the early 1990s. Directed by Johnny Simons, 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.

The 1994 documentary film Crumb, focusing on Crumb and his work in relation to his family life and two troubled brothers, introduced Crumb and his work to a younger audience. The film was directed by Crumb's long-time friend Terry Zwigoff.

In the mid-1990s Crumb traded six of his sketchbooks for a house in the small town of Sauve, in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the South of France where he moved with his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb (also a well-known "underground" cartoonist) and their daughter, Sophie (herself a comic artist). He plays banjo in the band Les Primitifs du Futur. In the 1970s he produced three albums with his own band R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders. He is rumored to have an illegitimate son, conceived in the late 1970's with one of his short term girlfriends. Crumb and his son with this woman have not made contact, and R. Crumb denies the existence of any children he is not aware of.

Crumb is an avid collector of 78 rpm phonograph records; he has over 5000 records as of 2004. In 2003, the collection was the source for Hot Women: Women Singers From The Torrid Regions Of The World, his compilation of world music from Mexico, Cuba, Turkey, Burma, and Tahiti. All but two of the 24 tracks were recorded between 1927 and 1934.

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Current projects

In 2006, Crumb brought legal action against Amazon.com for the latter's making use of a version of his widely recognizable "keep on truckin'" character. Apparently, this will be settled out of court.

Crumb is currently working on an adaptation of the Book of Genesis, scheduled to see print in the fall of 2007.

He has received several awards for his work, including a nomination for the Harvey Special Award for Humor in 1990. He signs his work "R. Crumb".

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Further reading

  • Robert Crumb; edited and designed by Peter Poplaski The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book; (ISBN 0316163066, 1997). "Crumb's Whole Career, from Shack to Chateau!" - Crumb tells his life story in 247 pages.
  • The R. Crumb Handbook, Published by MQ Publications, London, 2005, ISBN 1840727160
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External links

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