On Valentine's Day, the Stephen D. Paine Gallery at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design was packed with visitors, those who made the hopelessly unromantic choice to see "R. Crumb's Underground" on a day reserved for Hallmark, roses and sweet nothings. Standing in the white box of a gallery, these couples held hands, squinting to read the erotic, hallucinatory comics described as a "thematic orgy," in which cats are horny womanizers, the three graces are plump and clueless in panties, and disembodied penises fight each other over a helpless vagina. The entire scene is an R. Crumb drawing waiting to happen as quiet giggles come floating through the art school air from students, academics and nostalgic burnouts alike.
In "R. Crumb's Underground," which is distinctively above ground, all of the artist's characters have taken up residence: Mr. Natural, Harvey Pekar, huge, lusty women, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Snoid and Angelfood McSpade. Crumb is there, too, and the show's wall text tells visitors the history of his career in wordy, academic jargon — the way he started in the underground comic movement of the '60s, his drug use and his foray into the established art world. It doesn't have to tell the visitors how to love Crumb's freakishness, his pimples and thick glasses or his uncensored self-deprecation. It doesn't have to cite his immediately recognizable, old-timey cartoon style or his violent, erotic fantasies. Americans can recognize themselves in Crumb's landscape and can expect to get called out on their mainstream flaws, insecurities and hypocrisies. "Mr. Man" and the carefree hippies get equalized and pummeled on yellowing graph paper in black-and-white satire.
Despite his contemporary resonance, Crumb is an artist of a generation. In this retrospective of his work, references to Flower Power, feminism, pot and false enlightenment may suggest more to his contemporaries. Crumb made no secret of his drug use, and his comic crew includes strung-out and starry-eyed characters with long beards and crumpled clothes, all fully realized hallucinations against the backdrop of city skylines and normalized sidewalks and happily confined to the frame of comic book boxes.
What's truly incredible about Crumb's comics is that, while they stand for a certain generation, getting through an exhibit like this resembles an authentic '70s experience. His voice and style are just as potent now as they were then, and despite the wall text, titles, glass and frames, it's not hard to imagine the pages worn and crumpled on a kid's un-vacuumed carpet.
Political correctness gets ripped to shreds in almost every cartoon, especially when it comes to race and gender. Angelfood McSpade, a particularly offensive character, is the "primitive creature" from "darkest Africa," who towers bare-breasted and beaming over pimply, scrawny men, who shudder with pleasure and temptation. There's no question that the cartoon is racist, and, as one of the first pieces in the show, it comes as a shock to the senses. Racist characters like Angelfood were once rampant in America's mainstream cartoons, something Crumb doesn't ignore but takes underground and warns men to stay away: "She's too risky! Something might, uh…happen!"
In this way, viewing Crumb's work feels voyeuristic, like something that's hilarious because it's uncomfortable or absurd. In bold lines, he draws "Jumping Jack Flash" (1970), an "enlightened" hippie who amasses a cult of mindless, braless girls, culminating in an orgy of sex, excrement and stabbing. In the last frame, Jack is still rambling about "you are me and I am you" as he has sex with the pile of dead bodies, and below reads a very helpful moral: "Which proves once again that women are no goddamn good!"
Crumb may have a perverted mind, but he's got viewers hooked with his skilled hand. Drawn in black and white with button noses, big eyes and bubble letters, misogyny and racism seem lighthearted. But Crumb is not a comedian, he's an artist and if a viewer thought his self-portraits were exaggerations, a video on loop in the gallery defends his drawings. In the haze of psychedelic music, the young Crumb is easily recognizable as friends gather around to watch him slumped over his meticulous drawings, shaking his pen, his big nose and glasses nearly touching the paper. One can see how much thought goes into each piece.
Crumb was and is a phenomenal artist, a skilled draftsman and a provocateur extraordinaire. In "R. Crumb Presents R. Crumb" (1984), he fidgets, sweating and hunched, and claims that he has nothing to say, with a speech bubble stating, "It's hard to get up here and…what's the use?" Even now that he's above ground, there's still a lot of use.
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At the Stephen D. Paine Gallery through March 7
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
621 Huntington Ave, Boston
617-879-7000
