A Visit to Family Crumb at Zwirner Paris

by Gerald Heng 

R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Sophie Crumb: Sauve qui peut ! (Run for Your Life)

David Zwirner, Rue Vielle de Temple 108, Paris. February 10-March 26, 2022. https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2022/r-crumb-aline-kominsky-crumb-and-sophie-crumb-sauve-qui-peut-run-for-your-life

 

Within a cool calm courtyard in Paris, I find myself outside David Zwirner gallery at Rue Vielle de Temple, set among streets full of small art galleries and chic clothing stores. The gallery is fronted by a small reception area that opens up to a large, quiet, clean white-walled display gallery, the calm of which completely belies what is hanging on its wall at the moment.

The exhibit is anchored by the 'Sauve qui peut' (Run for Your Life) zine designed by Robert, Aline and Sophie on the occasion of the exhibition, interspersed by individual art, sketches and comics by the family - father, mother and daughter for the unitiated.

The zine doesn't pull any punches on the direct outpouring of thoughts  become comics of the three. The story starts with the Crumb's move to France and goes through a whirlwind of stories, touching on Robert Crumb's well-documented love of fleshy female bottoms, Sophie as a child, Aline's sickness and disease and his sharp barbed stab at the neurotic ideal French females. Having not read any Crumb for a long time, and reading the type of comics that I have gotten from the library for the past years, the panels induce a reflexive cringe of 'Oh God!" amidst guilty snorts of laughter in my head. I most definitely enjoyed going through the panels.

 

 In total, there are five complete comics in the exhibit.

Sauve Qui Peut(Run for Your Life) 

The zine written by all three Crumbs describing the period of their move to France and settling in.

 

4 Shades of Abortion   

 A conversation between Aline and Sophie of their experiences with abortion.

Crumb Family Covid Exposé       

The neurotic anti-vax nature of Robert Crumb, how Aline 'accidentally' got vaccinated and dealing with Robert's COVID infection.

Botox Enlightenment, The Latest in Injectable Nirvana

A single page describing the thoughts of Robert and Aline on botox. I would guess the title should hint which way Aline leans.

Old Age and Death

Another single page showing a funny conversation between Aline and Robert about old age and what Aline would do if Robert were to pass on.

 Along the back wall is a montage of single works by all three.

Here one can see the artistic talent of Sophie Crumb with works from 2010 and from 2021. 

 

This particular piece by Sophie from 2021 I would love to have on my wall.

 

Along the right wall there is a series of portraits of UFC fighters by Sophie which is nicely done.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb provided some sketches and reflective views of her situation and mindset.

Robert Crumb included these colored single pieces which look good, but whose context I can't quite figure out.

There are also some beautiful recent portraits by him -- amazing work considering the use of fine lines to create them.

 

 

              I find these older portraits beautifully for their spontaneity.

I will end this blog with a solo piece by Robert Crumb highlighting what I think is the major problem faced by many in today's society.

Exhibition in photos: Christophe Blain at the 49th Angoulême International Comics Festival

 Christophe Blain, dessiner le temps. Sonia Déchamps, Antoine Guillot and Jean-Baptiste Barbier. Angoulème. Vaisseau Moebius. 17-20 March 2022.

Twice the winner for Best Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival (2002 for the first volume of Isaac le pirate; 2013 for the second volume of Quai d'Orsay), Christophe Blain was honored with a major retrospective that framed the body of his comics work through the lens of his own cinephilia. The presentation of the exhibition within a large darkened set of rooms invoked the space of the cinema theatre, and the whole thing even ended in a rounded room that displayed his film poster work on its walls while a screen hanging down from the middle of the ceiling projected a 5 minute interview clip showing Blain speaking about some of his fetish films and their influence in his work. 

Blain's visual virtuosity with his brush and pen and inks is on fine display here. The exhibition is packed with a surplus of original pages, including a large number of preparatory sketches, that were all individually accompanied by the artist's own commentary. Everything about the exhibition, from its scenography to the non-chronological organization of Blain's work to the flow of the text and the commentary, teased out the wide extent to which Blain's cinema obsession informs almost every aspect of his comics. Some references are quite obvious, such as his clear love of the Western genre and its visual and narrative codes, but some revelations offered some new avenues of appreciation such as his admission of how the French dubbed soundtracks of many of the Hollywood films of the 1950s-60s play a major role in how he treats the rhythm and tenor of his dialogue.

As a cinephile myself, I greatly appreciated this opportunity to recontemplate Blain's comics and how he treads the intersection of bande dessinée and cinema. Antoine Guillot's intelligent framing and guiding narration through the exhibition does an excellent job of highlighting aspects of Blain's work in both a cinema and bande dessinée context. All of this work is not in vain as the wonderful catalogue collects and reprints almost the entirety of the exhibition: all the original artwork, all of Guillot's text and also all of Blain's commentary - only the collection of sketches is missing. 

-Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen

Photos are organized in an attempt to present a visual chronology of the exhibition installation as experienced in a sequential walkthrough.