Robert Crumb: The Sketchbooks

Taschen has released 1,344 pages of artist Robert Crumb's hand-picked selections from his notebooks.This six-book boxed set is the first collection of Robert Crumb sketches to be printed from the original art since the hard-bound, slipcased, seven volume series issued by the German publisher Zweitausendeins between 1981 and 1997. The edition by Taschen has been personally edited by Crumb himself to include only what he considers his finest work, including hundreds of late period drawings not published in previous sketchbook collections. Robert Crumb: The Sketchbooks. 1982-2011 is now available by Taschen.

SCREW YOU

Inglett_Gallery_Schneemann_screw_you

SCREW YOU, curated by David Platzker of Specific Object, shines a light on the intersection of counterculture publishing, tabloid pornography and the art world which occurred in the creatively fertile years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. SCREW YOU draws its title and inspiration from the notorious pornographic tabloid Screw: The Sex Review, which came onto the New York scene November 29, 1968. Nestling porn and fine art side by side between the sheets, content ranged from spreads of large breasted women illuminating such erudite articles as “The Art of Buying Dirty Books” to centerfolds conceived by and featuring artist Yayoi Kusama. Issues of Screw throughout the late 1960s and the early 1970s embraced a cultural breadth spanning art, advertising and editorial. Contributors from the realm of visual culture included leading movers and shakers Dan Graham, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.While Screw, Kiss, Pleasure, and Kusama’s own tabloid, Kusama’s Orgy of Nudity, Love, Sex Beauty, played to the strengths of the genre, contemporaneous periodicals such as New York Review of Sex and Politics, Other Scenes, The East Village Other and artist Les Levine’s Culture Hero favored a merging of literature and art in addition to its pansexual content. Notable contributors to these loftier publications included the writers Gregory Battcock, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski and artists Brigid Berlin, R. Crumb, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann, Bob Stanley, Walasse Ting, and Tadanori Yokoo, along with many others working in the realm of sex and sexual identity. SCREW YOU will be on view at Susan Inglett Gallery 31 May to 13 July.

Crumb Retrospective in Paris

His LSD-inspired heroes, rampant sex and frontal assaults on political correctness made comic artist Robert Crumb an icon of US counter-culture, but why on earth, he wonders, put his work on show in a museum? Crumb's cult universe, from hippy-era characters like "Fritz the Cat" to his cartoon take on the Bible, is on show -- uncensored -- until August at Paris' Museum of Modern Art, hosting the largest-ever retrospective of his work. Many of the 600 works on display are original drawings shown for the first time, loaned by a handful of private collectors in Europe and the United States. Crumb: De l’Underground à la Genèse will be on view at the Paris Museum of Modern Art until August 19, 2012.

Robert Crumb: Lines on Paper

Photo by Diane Tell

“R. Crumb: Lines Drawn on Paper” opened on Wednesday, March 23rd at the Society of Illustrators in New York with a special appearance by the revolutionary comic artist himself at the opening party. Curated by BLAB! Magazine founder Monte Beauchamp, the retrospective showcases 90 pieces of the controversial Crumb’s original work from the past four decades. A pioneer of the underground comic movement in the 1960’s, Crumb is notorious for his exaggerated, painstakingly detailed renderings and his penchant for dark, taboo and often salacious subject matter—not to mention his infamous appreciation for the buxom female form (which has garnered him much criticism from feminists). On display at the Society of Illustrators’ two-level gallery are some of Crumb’s original printing plates and a wide array of original prints and drawings, many of which would appear in Zap Comix, The East Village Other, Motor City, Head Comics, Despair and other counterculture comic magazines.  R. Crumb: Lines Drawn on Paper is now on view at the Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63rd St, New York. www.societyillustrators.org

Text by Annabel Graham