![]() ![]() ![]() Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Sophie Crumb, on view at the gallery’s Paris location. ''I thought they were better than my dad's, actually.David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of works by R. ''I thought they were so good,'' she said. ![]() Sophie said that though her parents had encouraged her creativity by drawing with her and showing her old black-and-white cartoons from the 1930's, she was enormously influenced by her uncle Charles's drawings. Charles, who committed suicide in 1993, lived his whole life, except for six weeks in 1960, in his parents' home. His notebooks show line after line of illegible text, disturbing in their compulsive uniformity. Over time, Charles's finely rendered comic-book characters became squeezed out by ever-expanding balloons of words until only text remained. On the direction of the reclusive Charles they drew comics, frequently recreating characters from the 1950 Disney film ''Treasure Island,'' which obsessed Charles. Growing up with an overbearing father, a Marine who broke the 5-year-old Robert's collarbone, and a mother hooked on amphetamines, the three Crumb boys - Charles, Robert and Maxon - retreated into the world of comic books. In fact, he was largely overlooked until ''Crumb,'' a 1994 documentary film about the family by his friend Terry Zwigoff, who also directed ''Ghost World.'' But he draws mostly for print (he is publishing a new book of comics this month) and has avoided the galleries. ''The format that they work in answers a lot of needs that are not so easily met by things like painting.''Ĭonsidered by turns a pioneer and a pornographer, Robert Crumb has used cartooning to explore once-taboo topics like incest, racism and misogyny. ''I think people are hungry for those things,'' Mr. Nayland Blake, an artist who organized the show at Matthew Marks, said the cartoon genre favored by Sophie and Robert, whose works are often autobiographical, has a directness and emotional honesty that's difficult to find in contemporary art. The most eccentric family member, he has lived in a skid row hotel in San Francisco for 18 years and frequently sits on the streets, a beggar's bowl in front of him. Maxon Crumb, Robert's younger brother, makes abstract, Cubist-influenced oil paintings. ''It's idiotic, but that's just human nature, I guess.'' ''Jesse said all his life people expected him to be a good artist because he's my son,'' Robert Crumb said in a telephone interview from his home in southern France, where he and Ms. Robert said the Crumb name has been problematic for Jesse. Jesse Crumb, 34, Robert's son with Dana Morgan, his first wife, lives in Northern California and does illustrative drawings and paintings. Her piece in the Jewish Museum show will be a shrine to Betty Boop. She recently wrote and illustrated a children's book, ''The Secret of Joe the Weasel,'' which she hopes to publish.Īline painted and drew comics before she met Robert 30 years ago and now makes jewel-encrusted, ornate shrines inspired by her travels to India and Mexico. Sophie, 20, an English teacher in Paris, draws mostly people and currently favors caricatures of hip young Parisians with rodent faces. ''They're all really interesting artists for very different reasons.'' ''Everybody's going after them for their art, not their familial ties,'' he said. The Crumbs are excellent draftsmen, he said, and have distinctive styles. Morris said the spate of Crumb exhibits was coincidental but not surprising. Her mother, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, will be in a group show opening at the Jewish Museum in February. Sophie, who did the drawings in a sketchbook that Thora Birch's character carried in the 2001 film ''Ghost World,'' makes her gallery debut with a drawing in ''Something, Anything,'' a group show at Matthew Marks Gallery. His older brother Charles's notebooks are part of a group show at the 303 Gallery through July 19. Robert Crumb's drawings are on display in a group show at Feigen Contemporary through July 27, and his work will be shown in a solo exhibit at the Paul Morris Gallery in November. That talent is shared by other members of the Crumb family, who will be featured in at least five exhibits in Manhattan over the next few months. It totally captured my essence, probably in a way that Robert's drawings never did.'' ''It was a cartoon drawing but it had a realism to it. Natural and Fritz the Cat, for about five years in the 1970's. After returning home, Sophie, a precocious child of about 8, mailed Ms. DURING a visit to New York more than a decade ago, Sophie Crumb went with her father, the cartoonist Robert Crumb, to visit one of his former girlfriends, the artist Kathy Goodell. ![]()
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