Robert Crumb's sexually explicit, politically
incorrect cartoons are being celebrated in two new exhibitions in
London. John Preston meets the artist hailed as a Bruegel for our age
In
pictures: chronicle modern
By his own keen admission, the cartoonist Robert Crumb has always
enjoyed a depraved and tempestuous relationship with women. His
first wife once tried to stop him from leaving her by putting
sleeping pills in his chicken soup. And then there was the girlfriend who became so exasperated that
she announced she was going to kill herself and jumped into a
creek. "I heard the splash," recalls Crumb
dreamily. "Did you try to help her?" "No, no, no." He sounds astonished by the question. "So what happened?" "Oh, she climbed out
eventually. Then we had great sex." However, it's
in his work that Crumb's troubles with women have really come
to the fore. The king of 1960s underground comics, the creator of
Fritz the Cat and Mr Natural, Crumb's cartoons are full of
enormously breasted - and thighed - woman, often seen astride nerdy
little men whose features owe a lot to Crumb's own. | |  | | Crumb's succès scandale |
In some eyes, though, Crumb is not simply a cartoonist. According
to the art critic Robert Hughes, he is "the Bruegel of the
second half of the 20th century". Crumb rolls his eyes and
says, "The Bruegel of the second half of this month, more
like." None the less, plenty of others in the art world
are steaming along in Hughes's wake. There is a show of
Crumb's work at Bonhams in New Bond Street, the first time a
contemporary cartoonist has been exhibited there, followed by a
retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London, the
publicity for which notes with great solemnity that Crumb's
"sexually explicit, politically incorrect work has provided a
hero for marginalised non-conformists". There's
also The R. Crumb Handbook, a kind of Greatest Hits package
interspersed with Crumb's sideswipes at people who have ripped
him off - "Schlockmeisters!" - and his characteristically
jaundiced observations on life: "Humanity in general fills me
with contempt and despair." These days Crumb lives far
from his native America in a village in the south of France - he
doesn't want its name published in case other marginalised
non-conformists turn up and disturb him. It is a very peculiar
house: spookily ecclesiastical, with vaulted ceilings, smouldering
joss sticks and little shrines full of Barbie dolls. But then
Robert Crumb is a very peculiar man. At 62, he looks like an older
version of his nerdy cartoon self - stick-thin, grey skin, wire
glasses, clothes that a scarecrow might baulk at, and stockinged
feet encased in sandals. "What made you settle in
France?" I ask, whereupon Crumb snakes out an enormously long
arm and jerks a thumb in the direction of his second wife, Aline,
also a cartoonist. "It was all her idea," he says
in his whiney, melancholic voice. "If it wasn't for her, I
would still be in Cleveland." | 
