FESTIVAL M.A.D. IN SAUVE

Robert Crumb. 2009. Festival M.A.D. In Sauve. Poster. 17 x 12 inches. Signed "R. Crumb '09" lower right. © Robert Crumb.

A poster Crumb made for a music, art and dance festival in a French village. Just love the cartoon characters, the arrangement, the color and the lettering.

A Short History of America

Robert Crumb. 2009. Print. A Short History of America. Giclee color print. 24 x 20 inches (paper size) 22 x 15 inches (image size). Limited edition. Signed "59/500" in lower right.

Crumb's iconic drawing of the transformation of America. A fair number of reproductions have been made over the years. It has also been transformed into a YouTube video to the music of Joni Mitchell (whose portrait was done by artist Mary Fleener).

☜Robert Crumb. "A Short History of America." CoEvolution Quarterly. Fall 1979. # 23. pp 21-24.

The original came out as a four page black & white spread in the CoEvolution Quarterly. The answer to "WHAT NEXT?!!" in the last panel is answered almost a decade later in a back cover for an issue of The Whole Earth Review.

There's a black and white YouTube version set to piano music.

Underground

Robert Crumb. 2008. [ICA Underground Exhibit]. Poster. 24 x 36 inches. (Original drawing is circa 1968 and appears on the cover of R. Crumb. 1997. Sketchbook. Volume 6 Mid 1968 to Mid '69.

Poster for the Underground exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the University of Pennsylvania. For details see. The picture used for the poster is from Crumb's 1968-69 sketchbook. It features a trio of happy, round, Renoirish women reminiscent of other joyful big-boned women Crumb has drawn through the years. The back of the poster lists the pieces in the exhibit.

La Famille D'Artistes Exposition CRUMB

Cornélius, une certaine façon de faire les livres

Robert Crumb. 2007. Cornélius, une certaine façon de faire les livres. Poster. 25 x 17 inches (framed).

Image for both a poster and book for the French publishing house Cornélius. The poster also advertises a Crumb exhibit held in the French town of Lorient from 23 March - 21 April 2007. The drawing is very similar to the Pepper & Stern Rare Books poster Crumb did some 25 years earlier. There are parallels between the two drawings as both were done for small book-related companies and both were made into book covers and posters. The man looking at the book is presumably Crumb. Unlike the black and white Pepper & Stern poster, the Cornélius one is colored, Crumb's hair and mustache are longer and whiter, he is wearing a robe instead of a jacket and slippers instead of shoes; the second man that was in the Pepper & Stern poster has disappeared, replaced by a stack of books (comparing the two drawings is like one of those games where two pictures are placed side by side and you have to find the differences).

The Cornélius book, entitled "ou l'art de la mouscaille et du pinaillage" outlines its publishing history and features works by a number of artists including several Crumb pieces that it published over the years. An interview with the comics editor of Cornélius is here.

54th Carnegie International

Robert Crumb. 2004. Carnegie International. Poster. 22 x 17 inches.

Crumb did the exhibition poster and and had a small retrospective of drawings, strips, and notebooks. The depressing machine people descend from Crumb's 1975 Snarf cover of a happy guy with a self-propelled vehicle (used for the cover of Underground Classics). However unlike the optimistic Snarf cover, the world has turned sour with the machine people vomiting from pollution. The irony of the drawing could not have been lost on the exhibit organizers. Here Crumb pokes fun at steel magnate Andrew Carnegie who the museum is named after, inferring that the hellish scene is a result of the environmentally destructive policies of big business. According to the Crumb Print site, there were 100 copies of this poster made. The drawing is also reminiscent of a sketchbook drawing dated 11 Nov. 2001 entitled "Draw Thru The Pain" that appeared on p. 27 of Mineshaft, #10, January 2003 as well as "We're Lost!" on p. 68 of the Whole Earth Review, #10, Summer 1993.

DIE VIELEN GESICHTER DER ROBERT CRUMB

R. Crumb. 2002. Karikatur Museum. Poster. 60 x 90 cm (23 1/2 by 33").

http://www.karikaturmuseum.at/programm/copy4_of_08/die-vielen-gesichter-der-robert-crumb

Very similar to the FATE magazine cover Bigfoot is Everywhere!

Qui a Peur de Robert Crumb?

Robert Crumb. 1999. Qui a Peur de Robert Crumb? Poster. 23 1/2 by 16 inches.

Crumb did the poster for the annual French comic convention. He was also president and received the festival's Grand Prix the year before.
There is a video by French TV (in French):
http://www.ina.fr/art-et-culture/litterature/video/CAB00004532/bande-dessinee-a-la-recherche-de-robert-crumb-president-du-festival.fr.html


Mercier, Jean-Pierre. 2000. Qui a peur de Robert Crumb? CNBDI. ISBN: 2907848224

Book released on the occasion of the Crumb exhibit. 2000 copies printed.

Seed

Poster created for an R. Crumb exhibition at the Modernism Museum.

"Seed", 32 x 17"

HINCKLE. FREE AT LAST.

1985. Hinckle. Free At Last. Cardboard. 21 1/8" X 13 3/4". Signed "R. Crumb" lower right.

An unusual Crumb piece: a cardboard poster that slots into a
newspaper rack. Warren Hinckle was a San Francisco journalist who had a column in the Examiner. He had written a series of articles critical of the SF police and then mayor Dianne Feinstein. A few days after Hinckle penned an article about the arrest of porn star Marilyn Chambers during constant raids on the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Street Theater, he was arrested for walking his basset hound, Bentley, without a leash.

A humorous critique of excessive police force. Hinckle is dragged off by three big cops. He cuts an amusing character with his eye patch and long hair. The lines radiating from his head make a halo-like effect, creating a kind of St. Hinckle. His dog Bentley is also carried away. The drawing effectively expresses the ridiculousness of three beefy cops dragging away a harmless journalist and his dog, a microcosm of the widespread resentment felt by the counterculture against authority and the police.

For related information see the Wild Dog poster. 

Wild Dog

Robert Crumb and Victor Moscoso. 1985. Wild Dog. Poster. 18 x 24 inches.

“You've got it about right, those columns were in the Chronicle and the rack card was to herald my moving from the Chronicle to the rival Examiner. Crumb also did some editorial- cartoon type drawings for the Chronicle to accompany my columns about the absurdity of it it taking 30 cops to bust one naked woman. You should see the "Wild Dogs" poster Crumb did at the time in partnership with cartoonists Dan O'Neill and Victor Moscoso. The "Wild Dogs" poster was commissioned by the Mitchell Brothers, whose O'Farrell Street Theater, which Hunter Thompson called "The Carnegie Hall of sex in America," Feinstein was constantly raiding and where the Chambers bust occured. (Chambers before starring in the Mitchell's porn classic "Beyond the Green Door" was the cover girl model for the Ivory Snow "99 and 44/100 per cent pure" soapboxes. The poster portrays Feinstein as Little Bo Beep with a huge hoop skirt under which the porcine police are beating the shit out of everyone under her undies -- including me. The "Wild Dogs" poster was famously plastered on the marble stall walls of every bathroom, ladies and gents, in San Francisco City Hall...If you want a copy of the poster -- its included in a book I'm just completing called "Who Killed Hunter S. Thompsom" to be published by Last Gasp of San Francisco in June -- (Crumb drew the scene of copy mayhem under Feinstein's hoop skirt.)...

Cheers,

Warren Hinckle

Pepper & Stern Rare Books, Inc.

Robert Crumb. 1984. Pepper & Stern Rare Books, Inc. Black & white. 18 x 24 inches. Accompanied by a signed letter of authenticity from the poster’s publisher.

A limited printing of 100 posters illustrated by R. Crumb to promote this antiquarian book selling firm’s rare book catalog; the image was used on the catalog itself as well. The drawing features a self-portrait of Crumb. Documented in Odds & Ends including a "reddish" version on the back cover.