IN A BRIEF NOTE introducing Waiting for Food (Kitchen Sink Press. $29.95), R. Crumb explains that these “drawings were made while waiting for food in various restaurants, or after eating, while people sat around drinking wine and talking…. The proprietors saved the placemats.” It’s an odd format for a book of drawings, but Crumb has always made odd formats his forte.
Although he has shown his art in galleries, Crumb publishes the bulk of his work in venues that most serious artists would scorn. Emerging in the late ’60s as the foremost-and by far the best creator of underground comics, he has continued to explore the possibilities of that unlikely form in a series of increasingly sophisticated, grimly funny autobiographical narratives. But this new book reveals Crumb for what he really is, a compulsive draftsman whose work has adorned everything from playing-card-sized portraits of old blues singers to a beginner’s guidebook to Kafka.
Crumb produced most of the drawings in “Waiting for Food” after moving to France five years ago. Featuring sketches of fellow diners and obscure accordionists, self-portraits, even a drawing of that Crumb comix stalwart, “Monsieur Naturel,” this work is sunnier than Crumb’s usual misanthropic fare. A happy R. Crumb? Don’t worry, he’s only a little less dour than usual. And the eye is still keen, the pen still sharp. No artist since Daumier has walked the line between caricature and portraiture with such finesse. Let’s hope it always takes a long time for Crumb’s meals to reach the table.
