Strangely, you have to go upstairs to see the R. Crumb’s Underground exhibit at the Mass College of Art in Boston.
Robert Crumb original art isn’t often available for public scrutiny, and not everything at this show — which runs through next Saturday, March 7 — is original. There’s a good mix of material, very nicely presented, with almost none of Crumb’s overtly pornographic stuff — which is good, considering that today was Family Day at the gallery.
In the photo at the right, facing left, is my old friend Morris, who showed me R. Crumb comics when we first met, 38 years ago. One of the niftier examples of Crumb’s work at the exhibit is a collection of thread spools he decorated with faces. That’s Morris looking into the case.
This is the sort of drawing that I suppose most people who know of R. Crumb associate with him, but it’s actually representative of only his earlier work, and is fairly atypical of what he did starting in the 70’s.
Here’s a relatively early appearance of Bill Griffith’s character Zippy the Pinhead on an R. Crumb cover from 1975.
