In the more recent documentary, How To Draw A Bunny, is not great art. Great art, just as the insane novel and drawings of Henry Darger were not highĪrt, but sheer insanity and just as the ‘pop art’ of Ray Johnson, detailed Yet, none of their meager paintings nor doodles ever rises to the level of They were just too insane to do a thing about Talent, and one might argue the two more insane brothers had potential equal to Two sisters, Sandra and Carol, declined to be filmed) all had a bit of artistic This film conclusively debunks that myth, for the three Crumb brothers (Crumb’s This is an offshoot of the silly ‘madness is genius’ trope. There is an alarming tendency to equate mere bizarreness in art with Out of his work, unlike that of the great painters and photographers of the lastĬentury. Proved to be his boon, whereas most outgrow it.ĭealing with high art, and once the man is dead there will be a steep bottoming Theĭifference is that, like Stern, Crumb’s arrested psychosexual development That dozens of high school age kids I went to school with possessed. Have had, but his actual artistic drawing talent is simply at the same level Yes, Crumb does have a biting humor that few others The 20th Century’, only show how silly critics can look when they prattle onĪbout their pet artists, and are quickly deflated by even a cursory glance at However, Hughes’ over the topĪssertions that Crumb is some great artist- ‘the Brueghel of the last half of Of brilliance in the man and the film, for Robert Crumb is certainly the comicīook pop cultural equivalent of Howard Stern. To rely on a porno magazine editor as an art critic, and how little the layety Hanson, though, raves about howĬrumb ‘never exaggerates’ in his art, which shows just how effective it is Porno magazine shoot with Juggs and Leg Show magazine editorĭian Hanson, but little of substance is learned. There is the fetishizing of ugly women, and shots of Crumb at a Pervert who lotuses on a small bed of nails, chews on a long cloth strip, thenĮats it and washes it after its three week journey through his innards, only toĭo it all again. Psychotic brothers, Charles- a drug addict and borderline pedophilic virgin whoĬommitted suicide after the filming ended, and who lived in the New Jerseyįamily home they all grew up in with their mother, and Maxon, an epileptic and His vicious dead father excessive masturbatory scenes of Crumb with his two Not out taking illegal drugs or making some woman miserable ’ reminiscences of Is the requisite trotting out of Crumb’s fucked up Jabba The Hut-like mother,īeatrice, who declares of her reclusive mentally ill son Charles, ‘At least he’s Its only deviance from formula is the deviance of its subject. But that’s what it is- a pre-Internet ideal of the classic Junior High School approach to its subject matter. From the technique of highlighting the bizarre and uninteresting people that inhabit mumbling cartoonist Robert Crumb’s life, to having statically placed talking head experts- such as Femininazi journalist Peggy Orenstein and Deirdre English, a former editor of Mother Jones magazine, who decry Crumb’s alleged misogyny and racism, to egghead elitists like Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes who ridiculously masturbate over the most inane and puerile of Crumb’s work, to ending the film with a text-laden write-up of what happened after the cameras stopped rolling, Crumb seems to be a relic from another age which is ironic since many in the film seem to already- by then, associate him with the bygone psychedelia of the 1960s. In the intervening years, documentaries such as The Kid Stays In The Picture, American Splendor, and Mayor Of The Sunset Strip have used narrative and filmic techniques that make Crumb seem downright quaint and formulaic, by comparison. However, upon rewatching the film, the first thing that stands out about it is how poorly it has held up as a filmic ‘portrait of an artist’. I recently came across a DVD version of Terry Zwigoff’s lauded documentary Crumb, and bought it because I recall how perversely fascinating I found it on a first go-round, when I saw it in the theaters with a pal of mine over a decade ago. DVD Review Of Crumb Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 9/26/07
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