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.

Whole Earth Review 25th Anniversary

Robert Crumb. 1993. "Unthinkable Futures" cover for Whole Earth Review. Summer 1993. No. 79. 25th Anniversary Edition.

Crumb's depressing future vision where he takes the earth, typically used for the covers of Whole Earth Catalogs and converts it into a sick-looking, puss-oozing, scarred globe. Crumb's third and final cover for CoEvolution Quarterly/Whole Earth Review family (fourth if you include the cover done for the Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog). The issue features four pages of Crumb drawings including the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury Street corner scene reproduced on the cover of an Atom Mind issue.

The Future according to Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb. 1988. "A Short History of America...With Epilogue." Back cover for Whole Earth Review. Winter 1988. No. 61. 20th Anniversary Issue.

Sequel to "A Short History of America" first published in Whole Earth Review's predecessor publication, CoEvolution Quarterly (Fall 1979, #23) and the subject of numerous prints over the years (a print with this epilogue was published by Kitchen Sink Press). The three scenarios: a nightmarish wasteland, a Jetson's funky high-tech or a hippiesh, rural idyll. It looks like he was sort of right on all 3 counts as today's world looks like a mix of the three. Although an extension of Short History of America, the Epilogue also stands on its own. Five years later, Crumb's cover for the Whole Earth Review 25th Anniversary Edition, the pessimistic view seems to have set in. The original "Short History" and "Epilogue" are shown on pages 34-35.

Factory

Robert Crumb. 1979. "Factory." Cover for CoEvolution Quarterly, #24, Winter 1979/80.

A controversial cover. The next issue reported 91 letters about the cover-41 against, 31 for and 19 mixed.

Voluntary Simplicity

Crumb, R. 1977. "Voluntary Simplicity" [Front & back cover]. CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer 1977 No. 14.

The first of two covers done for the Whole Earth spin-off publication The CoEvolution Quarterly. A bright happy homage to women & simplicity (theme of the issue). The orange yellow background adds to the brightness; stylistically the background has three horizontal bands (one third orange, one third yellow and the bottom third brown solid) typical of some other Crumb covers (e.g., The Last Supplement). The front cover features typical big limb Crumb women planting seeds, looking up towards the sun, smiling. The exuberance is contagious and the fertility symbolism on the front cover heavy with females, seeds, planting.
The back cover is men, stereo-typed farmers with baseball hats dancing & entranced by the women on the front. Crumb is being carried off on the back of one of the men heading towards the left, his back to us.
Crumb creates a fine sense of motion through the seeds being thrown through the air, the women slightly off-balance or skipping and the men in their funky dance position. The color, the motion, the cartoon quality and the theme combine to reinforce the happy feeling. Quite unlike many of Crumb's other covers which tend to be somber, questioning, critical and dark.

The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog

Robert Crumb. 1971. [Cover]. The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, March. Also published as an edition of The Realist.

Crumb takes this cover assignment for a "Last Supplement" and makes it a "Last Supper". The Whole Earth Catalog was a counterculture publication launched in the 1960s and this was ostensibly supposed to be its last supplement. Different period stereotypes are present in the colorful drawing, with a purple border at top, a yellow background in the middle and again purple at the bottom. Christ is identified by a yellow halo but the person offering wisdom is long time Crumb character Mr. Natural. There is an oversize African woman, dressed in a tribal skirt that offers a contrast to the other male figures. An orange furred animal is in front of a businessman in a blue suit with a long nose. At one end of the table sits a slick man with a yellow peace medallion around his neck but with a cloud thought containing a dollar sign. A hippie lies stoned on the floor, most likely a victim of the contents of the still smoking pipe in front of him. Another participant has just flown backwards in his chair in the left of the drawing. There is a political overtone with graffiti calling to "FREE BOBBY, ANGELA, JOHN, ALL OTHERS" scrawled on the right wall and "OFF OUR BACKS & the Pig" written on the back of the tee-shirt of the person with their back to the viewer in the center of the drawing. There is also a light-bulb headed caricature holding a rifle standing guard in the lower right. Crumb himself is in the drawing, seated with his head hunched down and back to his in the wooden chair on the right. The lyrics from a Beach Boys song round out the socio-cultural milieu of period. Crumb is acknowledged in the "Drawn by R. "Southpaw" Crumb text at the bottom left; in some versions, his last name was chopped off when the cover was printed.