Case Study 3: An analysis of Crumbs work, and a study into why he produces such work using: The Robert Crumb Handbook.

 When Robert Crumb made a majority of his work, it was post- comics code, meaning most comics were heavily censored. So was Crumb deliberately being provocative with his art? With hippy culture and subdued sexual thoughts being new parts of public knowledge and acceptable in this “free love era” maybe Crumb was testing the boundaries. Crumb was producing new art that had never been scene before in comics. It was arguably too obscene, but undeniably a thought provoking subject that is debatable.

In a self portrait illustrated comic (as often seen in his work) The adventures of R. Crumb himself, The writer/artist creates a story in which he goes for an innocent walk, is caught by a Nun, beaten up by a college professor, police officer and a gangster, who then pull this trousers off  and hold him up as the Nun attempts to castrate him. He then takes the axe from the nun, decapitates her with it, buys a bomb, blows up a school, and changes the name from “school of hard knocks” to “school of hard knockers.” Which then shows him put his arms around two school girls, pants off still with genitalia on show and says” where do I sign up” with a note on the bottom saying “So I’m a male chauvinist pig...Nobody’s perfect.”- P181-184

All this may symbolise his fear of certain things (he never went to college, had a strong catholic upbringing he no longer follows) that he thinks about on a daily basis, and castration being a biggest fear (as sex seems to be extremely important to him and the main focus of most of his work and writing.) It would then symbolise his letting go of those fears and embracing his true desire to be “A male chauvinist pig” or perhaps that is a sarcastic comment, what a critic has said of him previous.

From viewing his art, you could argue that Crumb seems to be sexually obsessed. And it would be hard to argue otherwise. “In those early strips such as Fritz Bugs Out I was making fun of the pseudo Jack Kerouc college boy (embodied in Richard Farina’s ridiculous book, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me)-the black-turtle-neck-sweater kind of guy who contrived a worldly, vagabond hipster image that would attract young, romantic, middle class girls from fine homes. I was very bitter, observing how well this act went over with the girls. I knew for certain I was much more an interesting artist than this abstract expressionist painter I knew in Cleveland, who painted giant eight foot canvases that were nothing but ugly brown smears.... The worst! But he was handsome, rugged, hale fellow who wore a big scalf around his neck over a shaggy sweater. He would stand there starring at his big muddy mess of a painting, while women brought him cups of coffee. There were always young, attractive women lounging around his studio wanting to get his attention. He had a swashbuckling aura around himself that made him supremely successful with women. It wasn’t about his “art” at all” P129

 

Crumb writes out of jealously and bitterness, seemingly only caring about the women and sex he could be getting, angry that he isn’t. Objectifying them to the sense that they like this expressionist painter not for his ability as an artist but for his looks, and with no mention of his personality, almost like it is up to him who’s art they should and shouldn’t like, (forgetting that art is largely opinion and many people see it in different ways.) He even insults poetry because of his lack of sexual intimacy. “When I was young, drawing comic books had no sex appeal whatsoever. Any silly assed poet attracted women more than drawing comics.”-129.  Perhaps these women did like the painter for his looks and money, maybe they really were that shallow, or perhaps saw an easy life in a time when it was only just becoming possible for women to pursue their own career’s and leapt at the opportunity to be with a young handsome, successful painter. But it seems a harsh judgement to make either way, and not really his place to decide who they should like and why. Crumb already looks to be a strange man.

He says he has always liked the built of bigger, larger, stronger women. “I dreamed of strong women. My sexuality has been rather quirky ever since (watching Sheena), in a state of arrested development and it makes me want to have my way with big, strong, powerful women. I don’t know why, I just do.” -  P94. Crumb once drew this type of body he describes with a baby face in Mr Natural; On The Bum Again, and illustrates an old man having sex with this in graphic detail. Poplaski defends this as it is a caricature of Crumb’s former girlfriend, so it’s okay. It’s ‘art.’ 

“Comment on R. Crumbs hard Satire Fair warning: For Adult intellectuals only! 
 Joseph Campbell, the scholar of mythology, once complained that people don’t know what a metaphor is so, for these people, a myth is a lie. Many of Robert Crumb’s readers and their police departments don’t understand what a metaphor is either. As a result, Crumbs hard satire comic stories are treated as obscenities. “Angelfood McSpade” becomes blatent Racism. “Joe Blow,” a satire on family values and parental influence, becomes an incest story. “Mr Natural and the Big Baby” is child Molestation, whereas actually, the Big Baby is a caricature of one of Crumb’s girlfriends from his hippy days” – P260

Similarly Poplaski defends “Joe Blow” (1969) from being and incestual story as it’s a metaphor for parental influence among their children. “Joe Blow,” a satire on family values and parental influence, becomes an incest story”. However, again, what Crumb draws is highly graphic incest and paedophilia, metaphorical and satire or not, that is the imagery. 

 It seems naked children, paedophilic and incestual like illustrations are acceptable in fine art (also see Branzino, A. (1545) Venus, Cupid, Fully of Time, left). But if a mainstream comic company, or Graphic Novel, tried to do a similar thing, they get ridiculed for it, even if it was to make a villain look evil, or being used as a metaphor. Is this because they have a younger child audience at times? I have never seen this type of illustration in a Graphic Novel. Crumb states he never had an audience he was aiming at: “Who did I think I was appealing too? I don’t know. I was just being a punk, putting down pen on paper all these messy parts the culture we internalize and keep quite about. I admit I was occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of the work now.”- P256. He brags “punk” like it’s a fashion to be new, exciting, different and daring. This is true, those qualities can be admired and in the 1960’s early 70’s, it was a growing fashion. But does bragging about his “punk” drawings allow paedophilia and incest to become okay? Because you’re being different, or metaphorical? Because it causes debates and critiques the culture or ‘system.’ Would this be okay in mainstream television and comics? If these subjects appeared as often as Crumb brings them up? I don’t think so. I think alot of Crumb’s work relies on shock value and the fact no one else produced art like him. (Probably for good reason.)

He uses the same pose he fantasised about as a 14 year old boy for a panel in The Brat (1970) and Mr. Natural on the Bum again (1970), possibly influenced, consciously or not, from John Stanley’s Little Lulu of the late 1940’s. Crumb tells the audience he fantasised about a position like this as a fourteen year old boy (P246), with no mentioned link to Little Lulu. Did crumb get his inspiration and rape like sexual thoughts from comics he read as his young self? He even went on to illustrate the scene he fantasised about as a comic where ‘The Brat, the little snot deserves everything she gets!” where a school girl attempts to give a handjob to a older man in the park, before getting stuck in a fence and spanked with a bit of wood, while the man smirks.  Normally I would consider this a mickey take of sorts and a representation of how young girls are represented in society, or the dangers of some people who view them sexually, but it seems Crumb is one of those people as has admitted this position as a sexual fantasy, and makes the comic somewhat paedophilic and grotesque, not as metaphorical as he and his defenders persuade. 

Putting into context the time of when Crumb wrote these (1969 – 1970) Crumbs says this was a time (on his Depression graph P442 - 443) as “Hippy-L.S.D Phase!” during his marriage to Dana (1964, p119), his first L.S.D trip and the birth of his first son. Did these drugs and his feeling trapped of marriage, and escape to taste freedom (1967, p227) affect and influence his work? Feeling the need to explore freedom in his art, in every sense of the word? “I had just turned twenty-one when Dana and I got married (in 1964), and as early as six weeks into our extended European honeymoon I started feeling trapped. At one point I had to leave Dana in Zurich for a few days to travel down to southern Switzerland to look at an apartment for us in Locarno. As I was about to leave she suddenly started to cry like a child being abandoned. I remember gazing at her in shock and amazement, feeling both pity and fear at the level of her neediness.” - P119 he mentions (harsly) Dana acting like a needy child. Was she the inspiration Poplaski says Big Baby had?

He admits he left his wife Dana without even telling her and hitched a ride to San Fransisco with strangers to pursue casual, uncomplicated, loveless sex. “One night in January 1967, over drinks in a bar, two young guys I knew vaguely said they were driving to San Francisco that very night. “Hey, room for one more?” I asked. “Yeah sure! Come with us,” they said.  So I went impulsively from workaday of Cleveland to the hippy Mecca of San Francisco, wearing what clothes I had on and with whatever money I had in my pocket. I didn’t tell Dana., I just wanted my freedom... and to get in on some of that “free love” we were hearing about in the Midwest. I was selfish, I admit it.” - P227.

It becomes hard to compliment the work of a man who draws horrifically strange pornographic comics, leaves his wife without even telling her, and comes across extremely jealous, insecure, disturbed and twisted. So how does Crumb defend his work? Poplaski tells us: “Crumb Himself told the press in 1976: “people have no idea of the sources for my work. I didn’t invent anything; it’s all there in the culture; it’s not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes.” It seems a hard connection to make with some of his work, that these events are primarily in culture and he doesn’t make them up specifically when you can link Little Lulu to his own fantasies, to work he produces such as The Brat, where of the same scene happens to an underage girl. Does this mean he is aware of the Little Lulu comic that bares similarity? Is this Little Lulu comic part of “culture” he just “combines his personal experiences” (the fantasy) to produce “The Brat.” Crumb has defended that the girl in The Brat is ment to be of age, but it’s very hard to believe him looking at his record of illustrations and the fact she doesn’t look a day over 12. I personally she is intentionally made to look very young, and there is no reason she needed to be, so Crumb tries to defend his work with a blatant lie. Crumb writes “I was lucky to be part of the “underground comix” thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open – no need to hold anything back – total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor!”- P256. Dose “total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor!” mean he drew his deepest and most twisted desires? Letting go from his “inner censor” telling him his thoughts were wrong? Dose he write "We really like drawing dirty cartoons, it helps us get rid of pent-up anxieties and repressions and all that kinda stuff.." (below) because those repressions are paedophilic and illegal?  He writes ecstatic about the ability to draw whatever he wants. This is understandable. At a time when all comics were heavily censored being able to draw whatever you wanted however you wanted would be every artist’s dream. So why, with all options open, not a limit in sight, did Crumb settle with an ongoing theme of paedophilia. I faintly understand his monkey faced drawings of black women being a point of throwing racist stereotypes in people’s faces, however vile the images are. But I don’t quite get his obsession with drawing graphic underage women willingly engaging in sexual intercourse or being raped. Of all the subjects an artist could draw, of all the stories an artist could tell, Robert Crumb writes and draws disgusting imagery about his deepest twisted desires that he can hide behind in the name of “art.

Crumb, R.  &  Poplaski, P (2005) The R. Crumb handbook London.  MQ Publications