Overview

A wonderful window into Crumb's world of bodies and ideas, art and beauty. Art & Beauty is at once a satirical take on aesthetics and a continued exploration of Crumb’s subversion of sexuality and mainstream values. Drawings of women in positions ranging from lascivious to modest or mid-sport are accompanied by quotations from artists like Leonardo da Vinci, George Grosz, William de Kooning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harvey Kurtzman. Mining his own obsessions and fantasies, Crumb reimagines the history of art, challenging notions of beauty, along with society's mores and expectations of propriety around the female form. The images appeal to a mostly erotic sensibility, which in turn is undercut by the inclusion of sometimes ironic and frequently philosophical prose. The images drag philosophy back down to earth, while the writing challenges the pure eroticism of Crumb's drawings. Presenting all three issues of the series in one book, Art & Beauty is arranged chronologically, from the earliest images in the 1990s to drawings completed in 2016. Paul Morris, longtime gallerist and supporter of Crumb's practice, writes an introduction that contextualizes this body of work and the artist’s career.

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Reviews

I think Robert's deep, almost unnerving honesty is one of the truly unique qualities that has created his enormous and loyal fan base. He gives his readers permission to admit to their own desires, even if they verge on taboo. I have witnessed dinner parties where people open up to Robert as if he were their psychologist because they sense his innate acceptance. If hitting a nerve and inspiring people is the sign of a great artist, then Robert wears the mantle as well as any other.--Paul Morris, from his introduction

Author Information

Born in Philadelphia, Robert Crumb is one of America's most celebrated artists. Thrust reluctantly into fame as a defining voice of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture with comic strips like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Keep on Truckin', then again in the 1990s with the acclaimed documentary Crumb and more recently the 2025 biography Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life, he continues to push himself and his chosen medium from his home in the south of France.

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