Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumbis an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth30 August 1943
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
developed gradually people
People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.
became cope itself life lived people stop
When I was younger, I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence, I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening, so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people.
thinking people way
When people say 'What are underground comics?' I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved... we didn't have anyone standing over us.
suicide commitment people
Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.
depressing reality people
They were just snapshots, nothing special, nothing particularly artistic. They were used for utility purposes. (On photographs of mundane streetscapes he had Stanley Something-or-other take in Sacramento in 1988 to serve as backgrounds to his cartoons. People don't draw it, all this crap, people don't focus attention on it because it's ugly, it's bleak, it's depressing... But, this is the world we live in; I wanted my work to reflect that, the background reality of urban life. )
people long stories
I lose patience with long stories. I get people who go, "Crumb, do some long stories, do a graphic novel." Novel-schmovel.
real drawing people
I always had a sketchbook with me when I was young. I was hiding behind it, basically, hiding behind drawing because I couldn't cope with people in real life; I was very shy and very nervous around people.
thinking people reason
Some of the wealthy collectors have paid lots of money for artwork that I already did, but I didn't do it with the intention of catering to them. I think part of the reason my work is attractive to people like that is because it doesn't cater to them.
taken drawing people
I use photos a lot for drawing people and personalities, but they're almost never photos that I've taken.
artist people doe
They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich.
american-artist interest type
I have always had an abiding interest in that type of female anatomy.
bunch pictures power text
Pictures have a lot more power than text. Text is just a bunch of little symbols. You have to actually read it and imagine it, and even that can be censored. With pictures, it's a lot more immediate.
backed bastards became drove mass moved sexual sinister
I moved further and further away from mass entertainment. The sexual element became increasingly sinister and bizarre. Don't blame me! The bastards drove me to it! They all backed off after that!
apart fell phase quite raised receiving until
I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scrutinizing it, it just fell apart so quickly.