The Genesis of R. Crumb's Genesis

This Halloween, Marc and I went to see R. Crumb, in SF to discuss and promote his epic illustrated work The Book of Genesis. Presented at the JCCSF’s intimate Kanbar Hall, the format was “a conversation” between Crumb and New Yorker art editor/author/publisher Françoise Mouly. Half biography and half discussion of the new work, a frank and often humorous exchange between the two old friends followed.

As this image of Crumb at 13 was projected behind them (thanks artolog for posting this photo), Crumb told the story of how he lost his front tooth in that photo. He said he’d seen an older boy flinging large pieces of cinderblock over a wall and thought, “If anyone was over on the other side of that wall, they could be hurt.” Before he knew it, he found himself on the other side of the wall, and sure enough, he was hit in the mouth with a piece of concrete. He went on to talk about how he began drawing, and the influence of early New Yorker cartoons.

Crumb told many stories about the evolution and making of the Genesis project, which he originally estimated would take him a year and a half, and instead took four years of intensive work and study. The story of the “begats” was particularly funny, as Crumb decided that each descendant needed to have an individual portrait. “If it was just a block of text,” he said, “people would skip right over it.” The “begats” were an important element of Genesis, he explained, because this was how people traced the origins of the tribes, possibly going back to the oral storytelling tradition.

In a discussion of how the illustrated Genesis came to be published, Crumb mentioned Denis Kitchen, and said that Kitchen called him and said, “Norton will give you a big advance for your Genesis book.” Crumb said he was excited by the deal and the money, but his enthusiasm faded as he realized how much work it was really going to be. I asked Denis Kitchen about this and he told me the following story:

“The background is that in 1998 I was visiting Crumb in the south of France when I was still the publisher of Kitchen Sink Press. I generally made an annual trip there to discuss upcoming projects. We talked about a variety of things, mainly his Devil Girl candy that was especially popular for us at the time. But then I asked him if there was any project he’d really like to do that, for whatever reason, he hadn’t. He told me he had been thinking about doing Genesis. That surprised me, but I shared his fascination with the stories in the Old Testament and encouraged it. We left with a handshake on it... But that year my company, after thirty years, was seriously struggling and there was no practical way to take on the Genesis project. By the start of 1999 Kitchen Sink Press was under and I reinvented myself as, among other things, a literary agent.

In 2004 I had a lunch meeting in New York with my agency partner and an editor at a major house who happened to inquire about what R. Crumb was up to. “I’d love to do something with him,” he said. I mentioned the aborted Genesis project and his eyes lit up. “Oh, I’d jump on that one,” he said. He said it with such relish that I had to call Robert to see if he was still up for the notion. “

Kitchen went back to Crumb and the two of them outlined a deal that Crumb felt he could commit to. With this information in hand, Kitchen “went back to his partner and we decided to hold a mini-auction with three target publishers. W. W. Norton came back with the highest bid. When I passed along the news, he was pleasantly surprised, we formalized the deal, and he began to clear his schedule. Ultimately Genesis was a grueling task, requiring much more research and time, something he periodically blamed me for, and it ultimately took him over four years to complete. But, in a strange way, this could also end up his magnum opus ---it’s by far his single most unified work, and one with probably the widest appeal. And, ironically, given the longstanding sexual and racial controversies over his underground comix work, his Biblical stories could end up the most controversial of all.” Kitchen could be right about the controversy, as excerpts of Genesis published in the New Yorker generated many irate letters from readers. Crumb delighted in these and read several to the audience.

The audience itself was actually pretty interesting, as this was Halloween night in San Francisco. At one point during the Q&A period, an athletic blonde Amazon, perfectly attired in a “Crumb Girl” outfit (braless, tank top, short Catholic girl plaid skirt and low heeled pumps) appeared at the microphone to ask her question. When Crumb invited her up on stage to show off her costume, she bounded up on stage, loomed over him (he was sitting) and said “Now that I’ve seen you, I don’t know if I should ask a question or give you a piggyback ride.” She finally leaned over him and asked her question directly into his mic, and was he was visibly overwhelmed. As the next person asking a question said, “I really don’t know how to follow that…”

... the Garden Grows at Dominican University

Went to the opening reception for Karrie Hovey's show ... the Garden Grows at Dominican University (San Rafael, CA) last night. It was absolutely gorgeous: gardens, bamboo forests and other "natural" environments created from an astonishing array of recycled materials. According to Hovey she used primarily "plastics, paper, cardboard and display materials that have been cast aside by retailers ... upon closer examination the construction materials emerge to reveal their origins in the brand name goods we recognize and covet."

Included in the show was a wall of "violets" Hovey created while doing an artist residency in Spain. "I was surprised they had such pretty lavender and purple trash bags over there," she said with a smile, "all we get here is black and white." We were happy to see a good turn out for this lovely show in spite of the horrible traffic caused by the temporary closure of the Bay Bridge (grr... arg... thanks for driving, Denise).

There's an artist talk, Wednesday, November 4, 2:30 - 4:00 p.m. The show is installed at the San Marco Gallery, Alemany Library at Dominican. Hours: Monday - Thursday: 8:00 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.Friday and Saturday: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Sunday: 2:00 - 10:30 p.m through December 23. Directions: www.dominican.edu/directions info: 415-485-3251 event page with installation photos on facebook.

Yerba Buena Gallery Walk 09

The annual Yerba Buena Free Gallery Walk was this past Saturday (11/24) in San Francisco. This year 14 SOMA galleries opened their doors and provided drinks and munchies to wandering art lovers. SF photographer Wendy Crittenden joined me in having a look at about 80% of them.

We started at SF institution Crown Point Press and once we dragged ourselves away from their addictive bookstore, we found lots of interesting art. Among the works on display was a special exhibition by London based painter Tomma Abts, who had done a two week residency at CCP in the fall. Her etchings with color aquatint were gorgeous.

From CCP, we went downstairs to 871 Fine Arts, who had a special exhibition of paintings, watercolors and books by June Felter. We oooed and ahhed over a lot of her work. She often did still lives that include a newspaper open to a comic strip in the middle of the table, in this case Calvin & Hobbes, although I’ve seen pieces that feature Krazy Kat and other strips.

Around the corner from these two galleries was the Sculturesite Gallery which featured a joint show of works by Bella Feldman and JP Long. Neither Wendy nor I had ever been to this gallery before, and we were impressed by the range of sculptural works on display both inside and out in the courtyard.

Next we worked our way through the cluster of galleries around Mission and 3rd Street. We stopped at Chandler Fine Art and Baer Ridgeway across from SFMOMA. At BR, we enjoyed Brendon Lott’s quirky oil paintings, and were fascinated with the sound/film installation by Maurico Ancalmo in the downstairs gallery (still on the left). In the center of the room was a sculpture constructed from old film projectors, which cast 3 movies amongst the stills. Alternating between a group of traditional African singers and footage of classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz, we were both taken by the contrast. We also loved their bookstore! A great selection of artist made books in all price ranges.

Catherine Clark Gallery was host to Sandow Birk’s impressive American Qur’an series, an ongoing project to hand-transcribe and illuminate the Holy Qur'an with scenes from contemporary American life. These are intricately detailed and colorful, sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking. There were also a few works from Birk’s Disasters of War series, commenting on the Iraq War (with a nod to Goya, of course).

We were blown away by the exhibition upstairs at SF CameraWorks, An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area - Part 1: San Francisco Plays Itself. Wendy and I both agreed that it was one of the best we had seen there. I’d like to point out 2 artists doing work on labor themes that really stood out: Jona Franks Uniforms series (photos of workers in uniform immediately after finishing their shift) and Ken Light’s mid-1970’s series of workers in heavy industry.

We had a look at Topher Delaney’s model train installation at the UC Berkeley Extension Art and Design Center Gallery, and then went on to the Modernism Gallery. The featured artist in the front gallery was Jerry Kearns, whose large acrylic paintings depicting Jesus in ironic situations really cracked us up. Here is his Lowland Drifter ( 2008, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 112) on the left. Among the other works on display were some by Kasmir S. Malevich, and a selection of small works by Le Corbusier. We were most fascinated, however with the gallery office, which was basically a large desk ringed with towering stacks of art books. Reminded me of home, although we are a little better at hiding the piles (ignore all that research piled in laundry baskets under the dining room table…). After this we toasted the Pied Piper mural at Maxfield’s (Sheraton Palace) and fortified ourselves with wine and cheese.

Marc on KRON Best of Bay

Marc appears in a featurette for KRON's Best of Bay for Boulevard Cafe (Daly City) in the "family restaurants" category. I'm in there too, stuffing my face with a wonderful shrimp cocktail. Yummm...

Poplaski Exhibition in Paris

Thanks to Jim Danky, I can share with you these wonderful photos of comic artist Peter Poplaski's exhibition and opening reception at the Galerie 9e Art in Paris. Along with the photos is a 3 page English language article from the Paris Herald-Times which not only provides an excellent account of the show itself, but also who came, what they said, what they drank, what was sold, and what they all had for dinner afterwards. I felt like I was there! Don't miss the slide of the 4 part Marvel Monsters drawing, which was the hit of the show.

Poplaski's latest publication is The Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski (more info here and here). He also is an expert on Zorro, and there is a YouTube video of him in costume showing a French reporter through an exhibition in Ganges, France (he is talking in English, with a French translation dubbed in). It looks like it was an interesting exhibition, and the video shows close ups of his sketchbooks and other drawings.

Morrie Turner at SFPL

Morrie Turner, Creator of Wee Pals Cartoon: a 45 Year Retrospective, an exhibition produced by the AfroSolo Theatre Company at the San Francisco Public Library (August 15 - October 15, 2009), showed an impressive range of work by this award winning cartoonist. Large display cases clustered in three locations within the library explored not only his best-known work, the Wee Pals comic strip, but also Turner’s Soul Corner panels and the social/political cartoons he created in the 1960’s & 70’s for publications like Black World and Ebony.

Turner, a life-long resident of Oakland, California, was born in 1923. He was a self-taught artist, and some of his first publications were strips he drew for military magazines while serving in WWII. After his service was completed, he continued drawing, supplementing his income with a job as a police clerk.

With the encouragement of Charles Schulz, Turner became a full-time cartoonist in 1964. In 1965, he developed a racially-integrated comic strip called Dinky Fellas that ran in five newspapers, which was renamed Wee Pals. By 1966, Wee Pals could be seen in over 70 newspapers in the US and abroad. The strip gained true nationwide acceptance after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, when it’s publication expanded to over 100 newspapers nationwide, making it the first nationally syndicated racially-integrated comic strip.

The library exhibition, curated by Kheven Legrone, devotes several display cases to Wee Pals. Outside the Children’s Center, on the library’s second floor, two cases featured Wee Pals books and memorabilia, and paintings that were used as background slides for a children’s concert series, A Journey Into Jazz, performed by the Oakland Symphony at the Paramount Theatre. These slides featured portraits of famous jazz musicians, and child characters demonstrating dance moves in different styles. Turner would attend these concerts, sketching the children that attended and giving them the drawings.

The heart of the exhibition, upstairs in the African American Center, focuses on the development of the Wee Pals characters (some based on Turner, his son, grandchildren and friends), his production methods on the Wee Pals strip, and his political cartoons. Many of these single panel “civil rights cartoons” (as Turner called them), drawn with pen, ink and watercolor, found humor in irony. For example, one drawing depicts a White panhandler saying “Thanks, Boy” to a wealthy Black gentleman that had just deposited a dollar in his cup (Turner says this really happened to him). Also featured in this part of the exhibition was a series of cartoons Turner created in 1969, when he was invited with five other cartoonists by the National Cartoonist Society to travel to Vietnam to entertain the troops. He spent twenty-seven days on the front lines and in hospitals sketching more than 3,000 caricatures of service people.

Turner’s drawings for the Sunday Soul Corner panels were prominently displayed in the third floor main lobby. These drawings, originally meant to fill up the "drop out panel" in Turner's Sunday strips, illustrate the accomplishments of famous persons of color.

Turner (shown in conversation with Belva Davis at the SFPL 11/15/09) still lives in Oakland in the house his father bought in 1941, and continues to reach out to children through small cartooning classes and guest lectures at schools. Turner’s life was the subject of the 2001 documentary, Keeping the Faith with Morrie, produced by Angel Harper for Heaven Sent Productions Inc.

Griscom Gets a Rave!

SF photographer Tom Griscom's labor landmarks photos recently got a rave review on Jen Bekmen's Hey Hot Shot blog. Tom started this body of work while we were both finishing up our programs at San Francisco State, which sort of culminated in the Syndicate collaboration with the Labor Archives at SFSU for Bay Area Now 5. Some of this work has also been included in the SFSU 2009 MFA show and as part of Laborfest:Art & Labor Today. Griscom has continued to build on the framework of this narrative and done some beautiful work. To the left is Griscom's photograph of Beale Street in San Francisco.

Griscom has also been assisting photographer David Maisel on his latest series, the X-Ray Project, which is based on x-rays of artwork taken during Maisel's residency at the Getty Research Institute in 2007.