Robert Crumb

side discussion: does anyone else feel crumbs sketchbooks are as important as his "real" comics work?

I read a recent interview w/ Terry Zwigoff where he suggested that Crumb's relocation to France has pretty much killed Bob's muse - he's just too damm happy these days!

i don't think they're indefensible at all. pretty obvious satire, though.

jess otm

??!

Update on Crumb's youngest brother Maxon:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/03/DDGU7L4D4F59.DTL

From that article:

His room at the Winsor Hotel, home for the past 26 years, is filthy. [...] Books on poetry, art and computer programming sit in piles; [...] There's [...] various computer parts[...].

Does anyone know or have any ideas about what his interest in computers and computer programming is?

england 1934? what's that? (x-post)

Crumb interview tonight and next week on Antique Phonograph Program on WFMU. The promo implies that they will be sticking pretty closely to the topic of collecting old 78s. Part 2 next week will include Crumb performing with the East River String Band.

awwwwwesome. john from the east river string band is a real swell dude too.

must listen to this later

It was really good. At least part of it was videotaped -- there are three video segments at the playlist page.

http://www.goldenfrogpress.com/images/101018-Posters/005.jpg

alternatively: http://www.goldenfrogpress.com/images/101018-Posters/005.jpg

http://www.eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=1281

http://observer.com/2015/10/robert-crumb-hates-you/

Crumb is a great example of how works of art can be made by obsessive people who make almost everyone else uncomfortable. He just doesn't have a mental filter to screen his socially awkward thoughts from view. If he weren't able to generate art from his obsessions, he'd just be a creepy social outcast.

"Peter Bagge's comics are very funny stories about young punk rock-type kids, a very sympathetic portrayal of their world."

Not sure from this that Crumb has actually read any of Bagge's comics.

He just doesn't have a mental filter to screen his socially awkward thoughts from view.

It seems so genuine and spontaneous from Crumb, no matter how troubling the words. With someone like Trump, the same thing seems calculated to me.

tbh robert seems like the most well-adjusted and normal person in his family

It would be impossible to say otherwise for anyone who's seen Zwigoff's film.

crumb otm about the ingrained sexism in hippie (as in all other) culture

this threads quoted in the r crumb pocket guide apparently http://i.imgur.com/OduUc4p.png

lolllll

just a bit of fun

that interview is terrific

“Your character in your work is more vulnerable than that—brutally honest, but human. I don’t see misogyny in your work,” I told him.

“It’s there,” Mr. Crumb replied.

hah

lmao @ pocket book

Charles is such a strange figure, the way he looms over R's psychology is sort of tragic. That Crumb repeatedly insists he was one of the greatest cartoonists ever due to the stuff he did as a kid/teenager is o_0

i will read any john waters or robert crumb interview.

http://www.ideologic.org/media/filter/l/img/crumb_2.jpg

That comic sums up the main attraction of Crumb's work to me - his ability to succinctly describe some messed up thing you keep doing/thinking and can't stop doing/thinking, even though you know it's messed up and that you'll feel way better if you stop doing/thinking it.

Somebody once said he did a comic confessing to rape, really hope that's not true but do you guys have any idea what comic might be meant? If it was true I would have thought it'd be brought up more regularly instead of the decapitation fantasy stuff.

i'd guess the conclusion to the "memories are made of this" comic that's excerpted in the interview

Is that record collecting comic before or after the one Pekar did about when he abruptly stopped listening/buying jazz? I don't recall if Pekar got rid of his collection but I know he got back into listening to jazz, or sounds like he did from this really great interview.
http://bookotron.com/agony/news/2010/07-12-10-podcast.htm#podcast071410

I think most people who get rid of their collections will feel great for a while but probably end up rebuilding it, but smaller and more sensibly and probably regret getting rid of so many things.

I got rid of half my comics once and there was a bunch of things I regretted that I ended up buying again. Some things I'm getting rid of a second time which I'm fairly sure I won't buy a third time.
I once accidentally deleted my whole digital pornography collection then was hesitant to save any such images again but after several months I inevitably started building it up again.
So I'm fairly confident that getting rid of all my stuff would be an utterly stupid idea, however much a burden it feels at times.

I really don't get people who can just give away everything immediately after they've finished with it. Especially music or art books.

There's an exhibition of his Art And Beauty images right now and then a book set comes out in a few months. This is the stuff I've most wanted. Never really been interested in his comics.

Apparently a lot of the newest stuff is drawn from selfies that girls have sent him. Really looking forward to seeing that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ZWrWmypA0

unrepentant to the end.

its weird how he doesn't connect his compulsive confessionalism to his Catholic upbringing. Maybe he has elsewhere and just doesn't touch on it in this interview.

The only other cultural tradition I can think of besides Catholicism that places so much emphasis on confession - as if its a virtue in and of itself - is psychoanalysis.

AA

Scientology

great interview/ramble

Has he ever commented on the whole Thicc phenomenon? Seems like an improvement in society he would like.

https://soundcloud.com/user-830367218/fumigating-the-cave-robert-crumb-with-dan-nadel-ep001-5042020
Crumb discusses COVID, conspiracy theories, therapy

unrepentant to the end.

its weird how he doesn't connect his compulsive confessionalism to his Catholic upbringing. Maybe he has elsewhere and just doesn't touch on it in this interview.

The only other cultural tradition I can think of besides Catholicism that places so much emphasis on confession - as if its a virtue in and of itself - is psychoanalysis.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, January 16, 2020 2:46 PM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

in catholicism you confess in private tho

xp listening to that interview now. he's really got some big ideas about viruses and vaccines

he's definitely "asking some questions"

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/DAVID-WOJNAROWICZ--1954---1992--Stoned-Sketchbook?saleno=2544&lotNo=162&refNo=769210
https://hyperallergic.com/581386/david-wojnarowiczs-stoned-sketchbook-swann-auction-galleries
so weird that neither the gallery nor the hyperallergic write up mention that these are all copies from zap! 12k for a swipebook!

Looks like an update based on the comments, but the hyperallergic article now says: "(These drawings appear to replicate those of cartoonist R. Crumb and his comic strip Stoned, included in Head Comix, a collection of his comics published by Viking Press in 1968.)"

yeah, that wasn't there this morning; editor dropped the ball. no reference to crumb at all in the gallery description!
in any case, pretty sure those are from Zap originally.

Does a gallery of all 9 original panels of "A Short History of America" exist online in a decent (or *gasp* high) resolution?

fairly large

Ah, I never realized this was originally b/w, I wonder if he colored it in for later editions?

Thank you very much.

The original comic is in black and white ink, consisting of a total of twelve panels.[7]

In 1981, a new version was released by Kitchen Sink Press, with Peter Poplaski adding color to the original work and turning it into a commercial poster for sale.[9]

ISO

https://www.deniskitchen.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=sk&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=SP_RC.shorthist

Kitchen is selling his archives through Heritage rn fyi

Could you *gulp* front me a few racks?

An interview with Crumb biographer Dan Nadel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-tM8GC67LA

Will definitely be ordering a copy of that.

I got my copy Monday and I'm about halfway through. It's really, really good.

The documentary sets the bar high for me, but I know a book has much more room to roam around.

The documentary was made over 31 years ago, and doesn’t even begin to engage with the fact that his best work had been in the past decade.

Thanks for setting me straight on that--stupid documentary.

Better answer: the documentary set the bar high as a work of art, not a Wikipedia entry. The passage of 31 years doesn't change that a bit.

2 Robert 2 Crumb...Coming Soon From Netflix!

Very, very good book. I think I was born to be a copy-editor though, because there were a few tiny nitpicky errors that made me go "grr" and put the book aside until I calmed down.

I've never seen this before--maybe it's been posted on a Trump thread.

https://i.postimg.cc/vB55zKYc/crumb.jpg

(Early '80s.)

Late 1980s.

https://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2023/09/hup-3.html

recently saw this pic of Crumb that looks like it could've been taken yesterday, imo

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSMiC2wemjcju_6UpTNj5Zj0-OYiz-_yddFtg&s

*in 1968

Yeah that photo did my head in.

Is culture/fashion in a permanent holding pattern?

Well, for Crumb it is, considering his deep love of old-timey music

idg what’s chronologically confusing about the photo — Crumb is visibly in his 20s, not his 80s; the bg is out of focus; the foreground guy has resting 1950s face; Crumb is holding a new copy of Zap #2… do you need to look in browser, not on bus?

His clothes, his hairstyle, his glasses all look contemporary to me.

I thought the revive would be about the new comic he came out of retirement to write in support of anti-vaxers and against the libs.

I read that comic last weekend. At first it was grinding on me and by the end of it I appreciated it somewhat. I don’t see it as owning the libs, but how fucked up it is now and how difficult it is to trust anyone or anything. It’s called Paranoia for a reason.

Looking at Crumb’s body of work, he has consistently made ugly offensive art with a broader point, but also he’s showing is the rotten gunk in his head. I don’t know why he would stop now.

Still, I sighed and was bummed out by the antivax stuff. I firmly believe in the value of vaccines, but the inarguable point he manages to make is: why the fuck would we trust the pharmaceutical industry?

Having said that, the most offensive thing about the comic isn’t his point of view, but how text heavy and visually uninteresting it is.

It’s not how I imagined Crumb drawing Kim Kardashian, that’s for sure.

He didn’t come out of retirement to write it — it’s not even the first thing he’s published about his Covid vaccine fears. Aline also addressed them in that DL that Zwirner published, and the existence of another DL in this would also show that they were both still working prior to 2022 even if the former didn’t exist. Were someone making an argument that the other comics in the issue were created as filler to excuse a one-off vax/libs story, this would have to disregard that Zwirner would surely have published a 12-page chapbook for $30 with just the first two, or that Crumb could have published any five-page comic in Mineshaft, which I don’t think he’s missed an issue of in 25 years, even if it’s only dream diaries*. But the sig on the LSD Trip story also shows that it predates the various conspiracy-based paranoia comics in the issue… so that would have to be a retirement announced in 2023, specifically leaving unfinished a 32-page comic book then intended to open with the LSD story (per Nadel), interrupted and then resumed in 2024 for Mineshaft #45, then ended in 2025.

*ok I just checked and the latest one only lists “R. Crumb on Death” explosive interview so fair enough if anyone counts that as not being “new work”.

the inarguable point he manages to make is: why the fuck would we trust the pharmaceutical industry?

“Inarguable” was the wrong word, but I get how one would be suspicious, especially if they were paranoid.

A crank is gonna crank and Crumb has always been a crank.

Review of the biog.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n21/j.-hoberman/desperate-character