Robert Crumb: Quotes about people

“Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it!”

Robert Crumb

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 180
Context: Before industrial civilization, local and regional communities made their own music, their own entertainment. The esthetics were based on traditions that went far back in time—i. e. folklore. But part of the con of mass culture is to make you forget history, disconnect you from tradition and the past. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes it can even be revolutionary. But tradition can also keep culture on an authentic human level, the homespun as opposed to the mass produced. Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses its fertility, like worn out, ravaged farmland. Eventually, the yokels who bought the hype, the pitch, they want in on the game. When there are no more naive hicks left, you have a culture where everybody is conning each other all the time. There are no more earnest "squares" left—everybody's "hip", everybody is cynical.

People

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“I wasn’t that passionate about it [the radical counterculture]. I agreed with it, but at the political demonstrations I would get very nervous when people started chanting in unison. I didn’t like that. I usually disliked those smash-the-state kind of guys, even though I agreed politically with them. I took LSD, I said “groovy” and “far-out,” but I was kind of a detached observer.”

Robert Crumb

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

People , Guy , Passion

“Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.”

Robert Crumb

"Simon Hattenston talks to Robert Crumb" http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/mar/07/robertcrumb.comics, The Guardian, 7 March 2005.

People , Courage , Suicide

“The giant female bodybuilder proves unthinking people wrong who believe feminine beauty can never be harmonious with well developed musculature.”

Robert Crumb

As qtd. in the Picturing The Modern Amazon exhibition https://mnaves.wordpress.com/2000/06/19/picturing-the-modern-amazon-at-the-new-museum
Attributed

People , Beauty

“I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out.”

Robert Crumb

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

People , Art , Nature , Drawing

“I never had a strategy in my dealing with other humans! I've always been very passive socially. I went along with their agenda. I had none of my own! Left to my own devices I stayed in my room or wandered aimlessly in the streets, fantasizing about bizarre things I yearned to do to big ladies, or filled with self-pity and resentment. I was helpless in the presence of other people! My main concern was to make them like me by being as agreeable as possible, and secondly to impress them with my brilliance, my sharp wit, my originality, and my fundamental saintliness. Over time, and after years—decades—of diligent practice, I became very good at this cute little performance of mine. But this performance was improvised in the moment, catered to suit whoever I happened to be with. There was no strategy. It was always an effort. Only in solitude was I completely relaxed. Funny thing…”

Robert Crumb

From his sketchbook (16 February 1998), reproduced in The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 380

People , Solitude , Effort , Time

“About the only power you have is the power to discriminate. Living in a culture like this, you have to make choices and search out what has the most authentic content or substance. In the 1960s, while on LSD, I realized that my mind was a garbage receptacle of mass media images and input. I spent my whole childhood absorbing so much crap that my personality and mind are saturated with it. God only knows if that affects you physically! As a kid I became increasingly interested in earlier periods of culture. I turned into a little nostalgia boy, and I became steeped in the Our Gang fantasy from watching them on TV. So much so, that my speech patterns were affected. The style of those Our Gang comedies was so charming that I started acting and talking like Jackie Cooper and Alfalfa. They had these cute kids, artificial mannerisms. It must have been embarrassing for people to hear me talk like that.”

Robert Crumb

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 60

God , People , Search , Boy

“People have no idea of the sources for my work. I didn't invent anything; It's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes.”

Robert Crumb

Comment made to the press in 1976, quoted in The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 260

People , Idea , Personality