ROBERT CRUMB AND THE ART OF COMICS

A distinctive feature of Robert Crumb’s career has been the early, and continuing, interest in his work from art critics and the art museum. His work features in the journal Art and Artists as early as 1969, and in 1972 art critic Robert Hughes described him as “a kind of American Hogarth.” More recently Bart Beaty has pointed out that Crumb holds a unique position for a comic book artist, that “on the basis of specifically art-world prestige, Crumb is an elite cartoonist.” In this chapter, David Huxley analyzes the way in which Crumb’s drawing style developed, through his early influences from American comic strips artists such as Rube Goldberg, to a series of stylistic changes over a forty-year period. It also examines Crumb’s influence, both in terms of style and content on early underground comix and graphics, and the subsequent rise of autobiographical comics.