ROBERT CRUMB'S SURPRISING NEW BOOK

The book (above).....

....and the author (above), Robert Crumb.

He chose his subject well.  Genesis is a true masterpiece, arguably the best book of its kind ever written, regardless of the religious convictions of the reader. It's also pretty doggone weird.

The weird parts start with the old age of Noah.

Noah (above, click to enlarge)) has too much to drink and falls asleep naked in his tent. One of his sons, Ham,  happens to see his father  naked and tells his brothers about it, maybe (I'm not sure) in a humorous way.  The brothers are appalled and take pains to cover the father before he's seen by anyone else.  

When Noah awakens and sees what happened, he's outraged  and condemns  Ham's son to slavery.  Why Noah chose such an extreme punishment, and why he took it out on Ham's kid isn't clear. There's tons of Jewish and Christian commentary on this, but I'm not familiar with it. 

I don't think it's fair to say that God justifies slavery in this story. At this point in history the Jewish faith doesn't exist yet. Genesis is chronicling the prehistory of that religion, when Hebrews shared most of the beliefs and prejudices of the society around them. The writer has God take a special interest in them, but we don't yet know where that interest will lead. Even so...it's weird.

Afterwards, God is compelled to take sides in endless disputes among the Hebrews.  A deity who recently had been involved with the creation of the universe and was steeped in the mechanics of black holes and such, was forced to mediate zillions of oddball disputes among sheepherders.

Surprisingly we don't question it, maybe because the atmosphere in Genesis is alive with growing potential.  In the writer's view, these people are being nudged inch by inch toward a more sophisticated law and a higher destiny.  It's what Merlin tried to do to Arthur and his friends in the film "Excalibur."

Surprisingly Crumb tells this story with great understatement and empathy.  The book is worth having.


 

HOW DID ROBERT CRUMB DO IT?

In my opinion Crumb was the best practicing artist in any medium of the 60s and 70s. No easel painter or photographer captured the times like he did. Maybe it's worth taking the time to figure out how he did it.

Crumb shocked everybody with his gritty, realistic inner city landscapes (above). Older people didn't seem to mind this ugly and depressing architecture but young people were steeped in bright mod fashions and appealing images in movies and magazines and they hated the old stuff. Nobody knew exactly how much they hated it until Crumb came along and satirized it.

City streets began to fill with black people wearing outrageous clothes. Nobody would give it a second glance now, but back then white suburbanites were constantly surprised by it. Crumb's the only one who bothered to draw it.

Back then adults didn't watch TV much and they were worried about the effects of TV on kids (above). They had good reason because the modern, clean, exciting world we saw on TV made the ugly, slow-mo real world seem intolerable. Once again, only Crumb bothered to draw that.

Other artists like Peter Max tried to come up with pretty, contemporary styles to represent the modern world. Crumb used a gritty, 1920s style (above). Max misread the generation. He thought theirs was just another fashion change. He failed to get a sense of how deeply the hippies were disgusted by the ugliness around them and how much they wanted warmth and personal connection. Crumb's style was the only one that reflected that.

There was a new kind of sexuality on the streets (above) but normal artists weren't picking up on it. Glossy magazines had pictures of slick models wearing weird, high-fashion mod clothes but that was the world of glamour...it didn't have much to do with what was on the street. Crumb was the first to suggest that the casual clothes real girls were wearing were sexy.

Crumb resisted getting into a rut. Sometimes he would do fine-artsy type pictures like the one above.

Young white suburbanites had mixed feelings about the newly liberated blacks (above). On the one hand they welcomed the "soul" and style of the blacks, on the other hand they feared the ignorance and coarseness that some blacks brought with them. Young whites of the period were firmly and idealistically committed to civil rights, but they must have found themselves wondering if they had opened Pandora's Box. Only Crumb managed to capture this anxiety.

Are there any parallels to today's situation? What should cartoonists be drawing now? That's a tough question but I'll take a stab at it. My belief is that, unlike the hippies, this generation doesn't want to have its nose rubbed in the ugliness of modern cities. Underground comics that stress sloppy, depressing environments are missing the mark and will fail. The society that's coming will reward artists who can create romantic alternatives to what we have now. That's why the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films are so popular. 'Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

The one thing I'm certain of is that you better fill your sketchbooks with drawings of baggy while it's still here. When it's gone it'll be gone forever. Emos are wearing stovepipe jeans and they're the new trendsetters.