R. Crumb: From the Underground to Genesis

Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris presents a premiere retrospective exhibit on one of the greatest illustrators of the past fifty years: Robert Crumb. A founding pioneer of Underground comics, he represents a mythical figure in American counter-culture. His satirical stories tear down moral constraints and provide a sharp critique of society and its absurdities. Robert Crumb is the quintessential underground artist. His masterfully rendered comics and sketchbook drawings spanning nearly five decades, markedly lacking in concession or self-censorship, offer a profound cultural critique filtered through demanding psychological self-reflection. Crumb’s art, which pioneered the transformation of comics into an adult literary form, addresses a plethora of personal and political themes within a multidimensional narrative framework. The work starkly depicts sex, violence, and race, among many other subjects, offering revelatory insight into the human condition within the snarled jumble of a radically changing America. He combines the keen critical voice of the master satirist with some of the most impressive draftsmanship seen in contemporary art, and his work has proved endlessly insightful, controversial, and provocative.