Art Beauty Drawings by R Crumb

A wonderful window into Crumbs world of bodies and ideas, art and beauty.

Art & Beauty is at once a satirical take on aesthetics and a continued exploration of Crumbs subversion of sexuality and mainstream values. Drawings of women in positions ranging from lascivious to modest or mid-sport are accompanied by quotations from artists like Leonardo da Vinci, George Grosz, William de Kooning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harvey Kurtzman. Mining his own obsessions and fantasies, Crumb reimagines the history of art, challenging notions of beauty, along with societys mores and expectations of propriety around the female form. The images appeal to a mostly erotic sensibility, which in turn is undercut by the inclusion of sometimes ironic and frequently philosophical prose. The images drag philosophy back down to earth, while the writing challenges the pure eroticism of Crumbs drawings.

Presenting all three issues of the series in one book, Art & Beauty is arranged chronologically, from the earliest images in the 1990s to drawings completed in 2016. Paul Morris, longtime gallerist and supporter of Crumbs practice, writes an introduction that contextualizes this body of work and the artists career.