Say what you will about Robert Crumb (he approvingly recalls having been described as a combination of the meek and the mean-spirited), but you can’t call him a coward. While he is diffident in person, his oeuvre--lewd, shrewd, lurid, grotesque, angry, erotic, shocking, and brilliant--has blown the doors off innumerable minds and boldly rearranged the sensibility of an entire generation. Since he peddled the first issues of Zap Comix on Haight Street (from a stack of copies that he kept in a baby carriage), Crumb has mounted a furious, inspired assault on all that is impacted, phony, venal, and just plain stupid about the culture that surrounds him. That takes bravery, and to keep it up, to keep snapping and ankle-biting for forty years, takes conviction. Publishers of Crumb’s comics used to get busted for obscenity, and the comics were destroyed; sheriffs’ deputies used to padlock the doors of galleries that showed his work. Convinced that his cartoons had made him rich, the IRS tormented him for years. The degree to which Crumb has become accepted by the world at large, where once his art was beloved only by a small, strange, profoundly subversive audience, demonstrates not only his courage, perseverance, and huge talent, but also his success in opening up the American psyche and letting some light in. Thirty full-color oversized postcards (6 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.) in a handy bound collection. ISBN 0-7649-3702-2. |
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