WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL ALL THE pretty girls would get me to draw their title pages. All the jocks would get me to draw pictures of naked girls. I was (am) the nerd who could draw. That was my capital. Many people have this notion of the creative person as this inspired lofty human who has 'special' qualities but the reality is most of us are the socially stunted, alienated, friendless quiet ones at the back of the class drawing in the margins of our math duo-tangs.
You may have seen the Zwigoff documentary about Robert Crumb. I recently found a beautiful Crumb still-life that blows me away: The drawing below of a simple French doorway. The cement is crumbling, the paint peeling. It strikes me in the way that Crumb took an empty frame of a man and sublimated him with his artwork. If you see the documentary you'll note that Crumb comes from such an unlikely beginning and just as easily could have ended up on the street instead of becoming the voice of 1960's counterculture. Like the French drawing, he takes this empty space (a doorway no less) and creates beauty in the decay with his rich wobbly-old-peanut-butter-sandwich line work.
My wife and I have recently purchased a Crumb Serigraph of the 1971 cover to, San Fransisco Comic Book. (SEE BELOW). Excited for it's arrival in the post. Also excited to read his new work -- an adaptation of, The Book of Genesis.
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