“What’s exciting about the work is his openness to his own desire and erotics,” he enthuses. At 72, he is a paler, frailer version of the priapric nerd of the self-portraitsĪs we wait for the great man to arrive, Lucas Zwirner, the 25-year-old editor of the gallery’s publishing outlet, gives a learned explanation of the appeal of Crumb’s work to a new generation. One collaboration, unprecedented in the history of comics or indeed any art, had husband and wife each drawing themselves in the throes of sex with each other. In this sense, the show is engaging and delightful but also, in a mutual kind of way, redemptive.It is Robert, not Aline, who I have come to interview, and whose pictures are on sale at a starting price of $30,000 (£20,800), but their art is so intertwined that it’s hard to understand either in isolation. But Kominsky-Crumb is a person, and she draws through the experience of being desired by and desiring Robert Crumb. The goddesses he manufactures are powerful but they’re not human. He has also at times used racist imagery in his comics, to satirical but nonetheless unpleasant effect. Crumb’s comics are, to be frank, kind of sexist. The pages are flat on the wall but they are of many dimensions.īest of all, perhaps, this exhibition lets the viewer see out of the eyes of one of Crumb’s women. The couple draw each other’s bodies, draw each other seeing each other’s bodies, draw each other thinking about their own bodies while touching each other. Kominsky-Crumb draws and draws and draws her body as the years pass. The humanity and the vulnerability in this portrait of a marriage make the show high art, anyway. There is nothing uppity or unwelcoming about the gallery, which makes it the right home for this show. I wanted to cradle the page, own it.īut the David Zwirner gallery (the show is at the 19th Street location) is a big and warm space, made of interconnected generous rooms. Kominsky-Crumb finds a decapitated bat head on the staircase at home in one panel. It was a little embarrassing to make eye contact with a cute fellow gallery-goer after looking at those butt drawings. The intimate nature of Crumb and Kominsky-Crumb’s work makes it an odd fit for a bright white wall in Manhattan’s Chelsea. The pages should turn and the object should sit on a table or in the lap. There are some problems intrinsic to showing comics in galleries. Cramped down in the bottom of the frame, Kominsky-Crumb has written, “Her father wrote operas-mine sold aluminum siding.” The woman of the couple is lithe and perfect. In one comic, she narrates a breakfast spent with an elegant German couple (Kominsky-Crumb is Jewish and has complicated feelings about the Germans). Kominsky-Crumb’s line has a freshness and energy that make her strips feel more honest and closer to autobiography than self-mythologizing. (The show’s press release calls it “more rough-hewn.”) But Crumb’s frantic cross-hatching can feel dense, crowded, somehow wet. Most critics describe Kominsky-Crumb’s style as cruder, less delicate. Bigger paintings are up on the wall.Īlthough there’s much they have in common, Kominsky-Crumb’s line is different from Crumb’s. Natural are also neatly laid out in the gallery’s vitrines. Crumb’s famous comics Fritz the Cat, Keep on Truckin’, and Mr. The alt-anthology Weirdo, which she edited, is also here. Kominsky-Crumb drew for the landmark series Wimmen’s Comix, producing autobiographical material about her experience in bohemia as a young woman. The pages are flat on the wall but they are of many dimensions.Ī number of other great comics titles are also represented at the show.
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