CRUMB AND ABSTRACTION

In an interview published in The R. Crumb Handbook, Crumb notes his disinterest in abstraction in postwar art: “You lose me with post-war abstract expressionism. The “fine” art after World War II doesn’t do it for me.… I don’t get what it’s about. You’re supposed to express yourself, but you’re not supposed to say anything?” On the surface, Crumb’s claim makes sense, since his work is representational. Yet, building on Andrei Molotiu’s interest in defining “abstract comics” as a distinct variety of experimental comics, this chapter analyzes how abstraction functions in Crumb’s work, in a way that is distinct from abstract expressionism but that is abstract in other ways. In this chapter, Paul Fisher Davies focuses on Crumb’s deliberate explorations, and scornful pastiches, of abstraction and cubism in his comics and sketchbooks, as well as those formal aspects of Crumb’s work that attract readers and fans: his crosshatching work, the expressiveness of his line, and other elements of design. In so doing, the chapter offers a reflection on what it is to be abstract, what abstraction is opposed to, and how non-representational, non-diegetic, non-specific, and non-narrative devices play important roles in Crumb’s work.