[S tereo ' « LES INFOS DU PARADIS » KCS 9700 P 3 & T H E C ™ COLUMBIA I M m c o ä ^ ' /^ f YVvvY^7r JPLAYIM An SINGW FER ^sS â^^.iW $ss® VINCENT KATZ Y EW THE r FOLLOW!WG. I TUNES... j ^,fryK»9a«- ■ Votai:l^Gw-v.s» Jp«,s_ (GtrsWin Bros) 1 v o c a l :JANIS THE ARR.: S. ANDREWJ NORMAL 'B'$ Marna" voç»l: Janis TKomtoiX r SAM HOUSTON GUITARS ONE ANDREW BASS' TURTLE BLUES DAVE •'VIBES" COURTESY o r .BARNEY ’S Robert Crumb, known as R. Crumb, ex­ SETZ, BEANERY = r 'PETER S. DRUMS ALBIN. ists in a hybrid zone. His best pieces, stessimi drawn in a comic style he perfected as ^ -— , ifJAMES ■j GURU Y, âMï a teenager, achieve a potent combina­ H GUITAR. tion of visual art and writing that lifts the work beyond its apparent means and beyond any purely defined genre. Crumb became an underground celeb­ rity in the late 1960s in an alternative scene that m ixed zines, poetry, the mov­ ies, and rock and roll. Though Crumb R. Crumb, CHeap THrills, 1968, album cover / Plattencover. himself is an aficionado of pre-rock and roll genres of American music, he lived in the outlaw world of the rock era. It is visual artists. His success is not predi­ Moderne de la Ville de Paris, wHicH artistically inclined trio witH a lasting no coincidence that his art form has a cated on exHibitions, reviews, or even opened in April of 2012. He sHows at sense of not belonging. Maxon, an art­ lot in common with art forms popular­ sale of individual pieces, but ratHer on David Zwirner in New York and (we ist and yogi, was arrested for molesting ized by musicians from Bessie Smith to tHe sale of magazines and books to His sHould also note) Parkett devoted an in­ women. CHarles spent His last years se­ Lightnin’ Hopkins. large international following. It sHould sert to a Crumb project in 2003. questered in His m otHer’s Home, even­ Crumb’s career does not proceed be noted, However, tHat Crumb Has not Born in 1943 in PHiladelpHia, tually comm itting suicide. in the m anner usually associated with been ignored by tHe art world. He was Crumb was one of five cHildren, in­ Robert Crumb is tHe normal one. tHe subject of a 2004 exHibition at tHe cluding tHree brotHers. He was close He left PHiladelpHia for Cleveland, VINCENT KATZ is a poet, critic, an d Ludwig Museum in Cologne, one at tHe to His brotHers, CHarles and Maxon, wHere He supported Himself as a de­ teacher based in New York City. His most W HitecHapel Gallery, wHicH traveled to and got His start creating comics witH signer for tHe American Greetings card re c e n t b o o k is Alcuni Telefonini, a collabo­ tHe Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, tHem. THeir fatHer, a United States Ma­ company. After falling in witH a boHe­ ration with Francesco Clemente published Rotterdam, in 2005, and He Has an in- rine officer, would fly into rages over mian subculture, Crumb Had an LSD by Granary Books in 2008. deptH exHibition at tHe Musée d’Art any “abnormal” beHavior, leaving tHe experience in 1966 tHat affected His vi- 229 PARKETT 90 2012 230 sion (in both senses of the word) and characters. Mr. Natural holds pride of era, part Allen Ginsberg, part guru. Mr. Crumb takes his obsession far deeper. R. Crumb, “Mr. Natural Visits the City,” resulted in an artistic breakthrough. In place, sitting naked on the grass, long Natural regularly gives advice to Flakey Naked women in his strips are the vic­ Zap C om ix no. 1, 1967, first page / erste Seite. Terry Zwigoff’s perceptive 1994 film, white beard hiding his genitals for the Foont, a straight-looking young man tims of gang rape and face-smashing; Crumb, the artist remembered: moment. Crumb loves to anthropo­ constantly in doubt and tortured by his they are reduced to headless bodies, I took this very weird drug. Supposedly morphize inanimate objects: on the sexual desire for large women. Foont their faces are barfed on, and they are it was LSD, but it had a really weird effect. c o v e r o f Head Comix, a lightbulb, a tree, looks like an insurance salesman, but killed simply for being women. As the It made my brain all fuzzy. This effect lasted a transistor radio, a bottle, and a dis­ he takes tons of acid. He looks to Mr. protagonist in “Nuts Boy: a Chronicle for a couple of months. I started getting these tant sun all sport human miens. Three Natural for a way out of his existential of Modern Times”(1967) puts it, “I 'visits the city" images, cartoon characters ... that I ’d never of the book’s heroes are printed off to doubts. But while Mr. Natural occa­ must go out an’ kill me a girl!!” After VË5. HE'S BACK »N TOWN... drawn before with these big shoes and every­ the side—Fritz the Cat, the Old Poo- sionally spouts truisms like “Whatever he does this in graphic manner, he re­ JUST TO SÉ6 AU- HIS OLD FAlENPS WHO ARE STIL,L- thing. I let go of trying to have any coherent, peroo, and, tellingly, the city itself. It it is that’s happening, it keeps on hap­ veals, “I feel better now ... Got rid of AROUND. MAV8E HE’LL e v ew d r o p in oN fixed idea about what I was doing. I started is Crum b’s settings that give his works pening no matter what,” that tempo­ my pent-up hostilities ‘n ’ repressions! you! being able to draw these stream-of-conscious- their ineffable air of veracity, and the rarily calm Foont, he is really more An’ it’s only a comic book, so I can do ness comic strips. Just ... making up stuff. city is as m uch a character as Mr. Natu­ interested in what is in Foont’s refrig­ a n y th in g I w a n t!”3* It didn’t have to make any sense. It could ral or any of the others. Crumb takes as erator.21 Crum b’s use of Mr. Natural, The extent to which hatred of be stupid. It didn’t make any difference. All much care with the details of interiors a ubiquitous truth-teller of the times, women is expressed in some of the characters that I used for the next several and exteriors as he does with faces and brings to mind Aristophanes’ brilliant Crumb’s strips is disturbing. At the years came to me during this period. They body shapes. caricature of Socrates as a charlatan in same time, Crumb achieves artistic fit into this vision I was having. It was a Crum b’s draftsmanship is perfectly The Clouds (423 BC). In both The Clouds volatility through the intense psycho­ revelation of some seamy side of America ’s tuned to the task at hand. He lures and in Crumb’s work, humor is used logical reality that he accesses within subconscious__ To me, it was like a horror readers into his world with such se­ to ridicule human pretension and to himself, and he impresses readers by show, this whole thing... it was like a draw- ductive wiles that they cannot escape. highlight absurdities, the absence of being so graphic, so naked. Artists ing of the horror of America.'^ This is the trick of all graphic novel or logic, and the lack of morality; in both, rarely put on view such clearly violent In that period Crumb first devised cartoon format work, a trick Crumb younger and older generations are and autobiographical fantasies. One his large-footed, pin-headed youths, mastered long ago. An acute social ob­ equally subject to attack. Crumb’s re­ thinks of the explicit works of George haplessly reduced to brainlessness by server, he spares no one his rapier wit, pulsion at corporate greed, expressed Grosz, but few others come to mind. the force of LSD. These figures are not least of all himself when he appears as frequently in interviews, allows us to Crumb repeatedly reveals the obses­ hippies, but rather ordinary neighbor­ a character. On the other hand, Crumb make associations with the excesses of sions that contribute to his psychosex- hood schnooks, types that had been is a “medieval thinker,” one who grants culture and counterculture, as well as ual makeup, which we are not used to around since the late forties or early himself the freedom to stray from the the lewdness that accompanies most seeing on the page. W hen these obses­ fifties—they might have some street yardstick of the rational physical world human endeavor. sions involve violence, they are made smarts, but they’re not exactly hip. One and any commonly shared standard of In strip after strip, Crumb delves even more upsetting by their narrative can see in these figures the first in a se­ morality. Crum b’s cynicism as to what further into his own favorite sexual ob­ form, as it underlines the senselessness ries of self-characterizations that came moves humanity—our basest desires— session: large women with even larger of the brutality depicted. to obsess Crumb in the years to come. is countered, especially in his late-six- butts. Sometimes this is humorous, as Crum b’s strips are universally trans­ My first exposure to Crumb—aside ties work, by a sense of hum or that is in the case of the Snoods, tiny men gressed.