It’s an extreme image, arresting and disturbing, and when I say as much he responds a little defensively: “It was traced from a photograph.” The inscription below the picture reads: “A HIGHLY SATISFYING CHALLENGE FOR THE ARTIST’S SKILLS ARE THE GLEAMING HIGHLIGHTS ON THE RESPLENDENT CONTOURS OF TENNIS CHAMPION SERENA WILLIAM AS SHE APPEARED ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE US OPEN …” Which brings us to that picture of Serena Williams, caught mid-smash at Flushing Meadow in 2002, with her breasts and backside jutting from a black Lycra catsuit. These decorously posed tableaux speak to Crumb’s less decorous fascination with the bodies of black women. Some of its pictures are copied directly from vintage magazines – not least two ethnographic images, Handsome Women of the Formidable Zulu Race, in the second volume, and Three African Women from Brazzaville, Congo, in the third. Photograph: Courtesy the artist, Paul Morris, and David Zwirner, New York/London Robert Crumb’s 2002 drawing of Serena Williams. Published in 19, with the third volume yet to hit the streets, the project was inspired by a soft porn magazine of the 1920s that smuggled risque photographs past the censor under the titular fig leaf Art & Beauty Magazine for Art Lovers and Art Students. Or, as Crumb says when he finally shuffles in, clad in funereal black and wearing his trademark wire glasses: “The dirt’s on the wall.” At 72, he is a paler, frailer version of the priapic nerd of more than half a century of self-portraits.Īrt & Beauty showcases a less well-known side of him: the lifelong junk shop rummager and connoisseur of vintage media, which he values for the craftsmanship of “the golden age of graphic art”. You are drawn into the work and you are judging yourself as you look at it.” “There’s something irreconcilable at the heart of the work that doesn’t resolve towards a single vision of beauty, and which is at odds with much contemporary art. “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. So when I see a style like Crumb's, the art school side of me recoils slightly because it's not as economical as I might prefer (though this doesn't necessarily make it bad, of course).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. "An economy of lines" was how one of my teachers put it - and as a result, my drawings began to have a cleaner look to them. In art college, we were taught how to work with fewer lines instead of more, particularly in figure drawing. I became a better, more complete artist as a result. He enabled me to use broader strokes, in different directions, to shade in the shape of the object I was drawing, and that freed me up artistically. I was doing it because I didn't know any other way. My teacher pointed it out to the class and to me, and made me realize that I wasn't doing it as a stylistic choice. The picture was recognizable as a still life, and I knew enough to render light and shadow, but the entire thing was done in hatch lines, all in one direction. In his class, I did a still life in pencil, and for some reason, I rendered the whole picture, which must have been 18" x 24", with this little vertical strokes perhaps an inch and a half in length. Me, though, I'll forever be grateful for him because he broke me of a habit I wasn't even aware of. We hated him with a passion and couldn't wait to get out of his class. He was strict, humorless and uptight and he was always hard on his students. I remember when I was a freshman in high school, I had an art teacher who everyone absolutely loathed. When it comes to Crumb the artist, the element that stands out in my mind the most is his hatching style i.e., those small lines that he uses to indicate shadow and dimension. While Vija's probably best described as a casual comics fan (mostly through my intervention), I suspect a big reason why she wanted to see it was because Crumb was a major cultural touchstone of her generation. For another, this was a few years before I met Jenny and she got me interested in underground comics. At the time, I wasn't that interested in seeing it, believe it or not. I remember when Vija took me to see the documentary Crumb, about comics legend Robert Crumb.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |