Somewhere in the ether, some unforeseen force pointed me in the direction of a new biography about Robert Crumb, and before I even knew what happened, I had ordered it from our local bookstore (thanks for the locals’ discount, Shery!) and quickly became immersed in its pages. It is a big book, but after only a few dozen pages, I was already dreading its inevitable ending and the loss of the daily joy of reading it.
I didn’t know a lot about Robert Crumb, and from my conversations with random people out and about, many people are in the same boat. Most, however, would recognize his stylish sketches and perhaps the “Keep on Truckin” bumper stickers that were ripped off by countless counterfeiters throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.
It’s hard to sum up a boldly talented and very complicated icon like Crumb, but here’s the gist. He had a tough childhood growing up in the 1940s and 50s, but got through it by making impressive and tedious comic book anthologies with his brothers and sisters, his oldest brother Charles serving as the ringleader and supreme editor. He eventually escaped his challenging home life and moved to Cleveland, where he began to draw greeting cards for American Greetings. He drew hundreds of designs, which allowed him to hone his skills while developing his iconic style.
While in Cleveland, Crumb also met a gang of like-minded young creatives, and they began to explore the boundaries of underground comics together. His work ethic and skillful cross-hatching style set him apart, and they began to self-publish witty and satirical comics that pushed the boundaries of the medium.
Crumb is a very skillful artist, but he is also quite deft at capturing the mood of the times and commenting on it in his comic book strips. No topic was off-limits: sex, drugs, racism, violence. Crumb drew it all, exposing it to the light of the comic book page and then ending his strips with a shrug of indifference, leaving the reader to decide how they felt about it.
He came into his own during the height of the 60s experimental culture in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Like many of his fellow astral explorers, Crumb experimented with LSD, which was enlightening but also led to some dark places. His trajectory as an artist continued towards an open, uncensored self-expression, which resulted in some very controversial and explicit work.
Reading about his work and his life, it doesn’t seem that Crumb drew graphic and sexual scenes to get attention and/or notoriety. Rather, it seems that he was trying to work through the dark and perverse thoughts that plagued his mind and open the forum of underground comics as a place to explore these taboo topics that the general public refused to admit that they too had thought. He drew scenes in stark, beautiful line work, said the unsayable, and was unflinchingly honest. Pure expression. Unapologetic.
In a telling story from his childhood, young Robert approached a boy who was throwing chunks of concrete over a wall, uncaring about who or what they hit. After the boy refused to stop carelessly throwing the sharp chunks, Crumb went to the other side of the wall, where he summarily took a hunk of concrete right in the teeth. The boy then stopped.
This story illustrates Robert Crumb’s approach to life and his art: that when he becomes aware of a wrong or something off in the scheme of life, he is willing to draw it and incorporate it into his comics, taking the inevitable flak in order to stimulate the conversation and hopefully come to a higher realization as a society. We would all be better off in the end if we could be so boldly honest, even though in the short term it would be very uncomfortable. Robert Crumb never seemed bothered by the discomfort.
Reading this incredible biography and seeing his development as an artist and individual inspired me personally in two ways:
I carefully studied his masterful sketching techniques demonstrated throughout the book and resolved to sketch more and
I was reminded of the importance of being honest in your work and following your unique curiosities
Being an artist for a living inevitably leads to making some concessions for the sake of saleability (“selling out”), but Robert Crumb was able to keep his vision and output provocatively honest throughout his long and storied career. I’m not saying I want to make what he made; that’s not the point. The point is to trust your instincts without question and not let what others think of your work be any part of the creative process. It is a journey to get to that level, but spending time immersed in the life and work of Robert Crumb took me one step further.
As I sat on the beach with my bombshell wife on a random Monday in June, I read the final notes from the author and slowly closed the book, sad to see it end. “That was a long, satisfying drink,” I told Ashley as we went for a swim. After drying off, she settled in to read a book, and I grabbed my sketchbook. What came next was nothing short of miraculous: I drew Ashley. I have for years tried to capture her beauty and presence and never even came close. But this drawing on this sunny day somehow worked, and I was finally able to capture her curves and nonchalant radiance. Thanks, Crumb.
