English
"I make a raucous, vulgar comedy of my personal quirks"
Robert Crumb's Sex Obsessions
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Huge, solid and buoyant female bodies turn Crumb into a literally fucking idiot, as we see inside HUP #3 ("Story o' my Life"), and a big baby, which is how he portrays himself: drooling, terrified, and sexually excited to be pushed in a buggy by a muscular and girlish Scandinavian goddess/nanny. (Actually, she was supposed to be German. —R.C.) He can twist her this way and that as he screws her; he can smash her boot into her face and enjoy it. Her body seems so strong, yet he can toy with her. Crumb's are the only comics I looked at in which a male creator admits to his lust—near adoration of big female muscle while also realizing that he is, in his own words, 'abnormal', 'boring', 'annoying', a 'creep'. I appreciate his honesty."
—Joanna Frueh, Comments on the Comics from the Modern Amazon, 2000, edited by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein & Judith Stein
"Crumb knows full well that his fantasies are infantile. His escape hatch is his sense of humor. In most of his comics the female figure is a giantess, the punishing, restraining mother, and the male hero is a 'little guy', the 'man-boy' who has to break free of her. The woman is always the stronger of the two, but the little guy is smarter and always wins in the end. Crumb's version of one of the classic themes of myths and children's stories—David and Goliath, Tom Thumb and the Ogre—is the little boy versus the mother."
—Margorie Allessandrini, Crumb (French, 1974), translated from the French by William Mason
"Robert—don't ever stop ever change ever forget your funky primal thang. That Miss Universe she be shakin' her booty at you in the hope that one day, more her children gonna be as incandescently appreciative as your own dear bad self."
—Leslie Sternbergh, Bum a la Crumb, essay in STOP magazine, 1990
Gosh, I don't know what to say. I guess the work speaks for itself, for better or worse, huh? Yes, yes, I love drawing pictures of big, well-built ladies getting theirs ... I get deeply involved in it, lost in it ... I thrill myself ... Yes, yes, it's masturbatory ... Abusing my god-given talent and my powers of imagination over here, most undeniably. These fantasies, this schema, has ruled my life! Naturally, I've felt a lot of shame, guilt and self-loathing around it, but for some nutty reason—desperate need for approval, narcissistic display, passive aggressivity—I'm compelled to push it in the public's face. This seems to be my fate, my destiny in this lifetime—to play this ridiculous sexpervert buffoon in my comics and drawings. Yes, yes, it's sure not beautiful or romantic, or sweet or gentle. I know it's often offensive. It sends most women fleeing in the opposite direction, disgusted, angry, indignant. I have very few female fans ... Let's see, there's Leslie Sternbergh, and, um, uhh ... (admittedly, she's a very eccentric female artist) ... Be that as it may, I stand before you exposed ... Nothing remains hidden ... It's not "toned down" for mass consumption ... Sorry, I can't do it ... If that's what you want, there's plenty of media entertainment out there just for you. Even so, I still want my work to be entertaining. I can't help it, I was "trained" to be a cartoonist ... So, I make it into a burlesque. I make a raucous, vulgar comedy of my personal quirks,my "angst", if you will. I like vulgar, sexual comedy.When I was young I used to patronize those old-time burlesque shows, those shabby comedians doing their worn-out routines with meaty strip-tease artists ... It was entertainment for loser males. It was replaced, eclipsed, by porno movie houses showing utterly humorless, mechanical fuck'n'squirt films. The idea of bawdy humor got lost in the shuffle.
I can't hold it against women for being repelled by my crazy sex drawings. As Freud tried to explain, civilized humans are a bundle of contradictions. For us sex is a dark, murky swamp, a tangled growth of desire and shame, where domination and submission boil and bubble, giving life to an endless variety of sexual critters, species and subspecies. Ho boy, it's a zoo! Who wants to see it! Who wants to know about it?! Scary... The simple truth is, I have no explanation for this work. I don't know what I'm doing or why I do it, and what it does for other people, I haven't a clue!
—R. Crumb, May '06
Page [1]
Page [1]
Huge, solid and buoyant female bodies turn Crumb into a literally fucking idiot, as we see inside HUP #3 ("Story o' my Life"), and a big baby, which is how he portrays himself: drooling, terrified, and sexually excited to be pushed in a buggy by a muscular and girlish Scandinavian goddess/nanny. (Actually, she was supposed to be German. —R.C.) He can twist her this way and that as he screws her; he can smash her boot into her face and enjoy it. Her body seems so strong, yet he can toy with her. Crumb's are the only comics I looked at in which a male creator admits to his lust—near adoration of big female muscle while also realizing that he is, in his own words, 'abnormal', 'boring', 'annoying', a 'creep'. I appreciate his honesty."
—Joanna Frueh, Comments on the Comics from the Modern Amazon, 2000, edited by Joanna Frueh, Laurie Fierstein & Judith Stein
"Crumb knows full well that his fantasies are infantile. His escape hatch is his sense of humor. In most of his comics the female figure is a giantess, the punishing, restraining mother, and the male hero is a 'little guy', the 'man-boy' who has to break free of her. The woman is always the stronger of the two, but the little guy is smarter and always wins in the end. Crumb's version of one of the classic themes of myths and children's stories—David and Goliath, Tom Thumb and the Ogre—is the little boy versus the mother."
—Margorie Allessandrini, Crumb (French, 1974), translated from the French by William Mason
"Robert—don't ever stop ever change ever forget your funky primal thang. That Miss Universe she be shakin' her booty at you in the hope that one day, more her children gonna be as incandescently appreciative as your own dear bad self."
—Leslie Sternbergh, Bum a la Crumb, essay in STOP magazine, 1990
Gosh, I don't know what to say. I guess the work speaks for itself, for better or worse, huh? Yes, yes, I love drawing pictures of big, well-built ladies getting theirs ... I get deeply involved in it, lost in it ... I thrill myself ... Yes, yes, it's masturbatory ... Abusing my god-given talent and my powers of imagination over here, most undeniably. These fantasies, this schema, has ruled my life! Naturally, I've felt a lot of shame, guilt and self-loathing around it, but for some nutty reason—desperate need for approval, narcissistic display, passive aggressivity—I'm compelled to push it in the public's face. This seems to be my fate, my destiny in this lifetime—to play this ridiculous sexpervert buffoon in my comics and drawings. Yes, yes, it's sure not beautiful or romantic, or sweet or gentle. I know it's often offensive. It sends most women fleeing in the opposite direction, disgusted, angry, indignant. I have very few female fans ... Let's see, there's Leslie Sternbergh, and, um, uhh ... (admittedly, she's a very eccentric female artist) ... Be that as it may, I stand before you exposed ... Nothing remains hidden ... It's not "toned down" for mass consumption ... Sorry, I can't do it ... If that's what you want, there's plenty of media entertainment out there just for you. Even so, I still want my work to be entertaining. I can't help it, I was "trained" to be a cartoonist ... So, I make it into a burlesque. I make a raucous, vulgar comedy of my personal quirks,my "angst", if you will. I like vulgar, sexual comedy.When I was young I used to patronize those old-time burlesque shows, those shabby comedians doing their worn-out routines with meaty strip-tease artists ... It was entertainment for loser males. It was replaced, eclipsed, by porno movie houses showing utterly humorless, mechanical fuck'n'squirt films. The idea of bawdy humor got lost in the shuffle.
I can't hold it against women for being repelled by my crazy sex drawings. As Freud tried to explain, civilized humans are a bundle of contradictions. For us sex is a dark, murky swamp, a tangled growth of desire and shame, where domination and submission boil and bubble, giving life to an endless variety of sexual critters, species and subspecies. Ho boy, it's a zoo! Who wants to see it! Who wants to know about it?! Scary... The simple truth is, I have no explanation for this work. I don't know what I'm doing or why I do it, and what it does for other people, I haven't a clue!
—R. Crumb, May '06
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Robert Crumb's Sex Obsessions
Hardcover + Box 8 x 10.8 in., 258 pages
$ 700.00
$ 700.00
Crumb has selected his most intimately revealing comic strips and single page drawings to create a 258 page encyclopedic trip through his sexual psyche. Limited to 1,000 copies, each numbered and signed by the artist.
