Happy Birthday, R.

Found out that it was R. Crumb's birthday yesterday. I will now celebrate with a cool drink or three.

Still More Crumb

It's a day after the initial post and I'm still thinking about Crumb. Watch the documentary and you will see that he is a phenomenal artist, and despite his cartoonist leanings, he can crunch out realism with the best of them. I was surprised at how dark the film became toward the end. Crumb's brothers are (were) completely messed up. He seems like a social sophisticate compared to them. Casualties of your typical deceptively antiseptic fifties childhood with a raging father and a crazy mother.

I wish I had a book of his so I could just scan something instead of rooting around the web, but the above drawing sums him up nicely. There's an interesting interview with him on the Guardian from a couple years ago.

I Have Seen the Crumb

Good ol' R. Crumb. I just finally saw the documentary whut bears his name. I've never been a huge fan, but I'm coming around. Above is an example of the stuff of his I dig, but I have trouble with his seventies-ish post-psychadelic sexual-preversion type stuff. Regardless, his purity of expression is inspiring, that creation of something different, progressive, experimental, and such. You know, as opposed to the conservative adherence to a style of drawing or a way of setting up a joke. Food for thought.