Great article in the NYT regarding a rare appearance at the NY Public Library by the legendary iconoclastic cartoonist R. Crumb, and art critic Robert Hughes. Talk about an odd couple.
I've been a Crumb fan since I was a kid. His more sexually explicit works were part of our coming of age, and the 1994 documentary film by Terry Zwigoff is well worth seeking out - if not a little disturbing. If you thought you might have had a weird childhood, you'll count your blessings repeatedly when you meet R. Crumb's mother and brothers.
During the discussion with Mr. Hughes - which did not stint on classic Crumb references to fellatio, beheaded nuns, near-severed penises and throwing up while on LSD - Mr. Crumb often seemed to be of two minds about his fame and increasing acceptance in the gallery-art world, which ignored him for so long. He said that as a disaffected young man, if he had not had the outlet of drawing, he probably would have ended up sketching his lurid, big-bottomed female characters "on some prison wall or in a lunatic asylum someplace, or I'd be dead."
