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.

It's "Red-Tag" Time in the Country

Robert Crumb. 1974. "It's 'Red-Tag' Time in the Country." Cover for The Mendocino Grapevine. 1-15 April 1974. #16. 17 x 11 3/4 inches (half that length folded).

One of two covers Crumb did for The Mendocino Grapevine, a northern California counterculture tabloid. The drawing depicts the heavy-handed force of the authorities closing down hippie communes for supposed state housing violations. This cover is reproduced in Don Fiene's R. Crumb Checklist (p. 39) as well as a book about the alternative press (David Armstrong, A Trumpet To Arms, p. 200). The other Grapevine cover (see Odds & Ends, 1972 page) Crumb did was also reproduced as a color version for the Fox River Patriot and was also made into an etching.

I obtained this copy of the Grapevine from photographer Nicholas Wilson. He has published photos he took in the 70s in a beautiful book, Mendocino in the Seventies, which he kindly signed. The photos provide a nice context for the Grapevine period. A photo of two cops on page 65 reinforces the Grapevine cover theme; they had come to close down a rock festival based on a new county ordinance. To order the book: http://www.nwilsonphoto.com/book.htm


Nicholas Wilson. 2006. Mendocino in the Seventies. Published by Nicholas Wilson. Signed "For Michael - Nicholas Wilson".

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.

Cartoon Show, Berkeley

Flyer issued to advertise one of Crumb's first exhibitions. Widely seen over eBay. Bought mine from Don Donahue of Apex Novelties who states that with the one I have:

"... an expert could see that it was printed by offset lithography and not on a copy machine or a computer printer."