Forty-four drawings in ink (and a bit of whiteout), dated from the ’60s to this year, offer a mildly sanitized survey of Crumb’s comics. Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl, Mr. Natural, and other regulars are present, but the transgressive/offensive is nearly absent from this grouping of topical vignettes, character studies, and book covers. While devotees might miss the artist’s no-holds-barred perversity, the quieter work on view here reveals Crumb’s capacity for daft commentary and satire. Among the scratchy, hatchy lines are complex, uncomfortable, and funny reflections on gender, sex, anxiety, and power. The most sensitive is a group of drawings made for a New York Times Magazine spread in which Crumb’s wife Aline models couture outfits, her expressions running the gamut between insecurity and confidence.
Several of the more cutting works are almost classic Crumb, treading the edge of social pathology: One shows a black boxer called “Kid Chocolat,” sweaty and beaten, resting between rounds and dreaming (with the help of a thought bubble) of a better life playing maracas in a jazz band. Another, populated by humdrum, depressive-looking men and anatomically exaggerated women, bears the heading “I’m Afraid . . . I Am Sick Man.” It’s a seemingly deliberate echo of the famous opening lines (“I am a sick man. . . . I am an unattractive man”) of another set of notes from underground.
