Today I made a pilgrimage to the Hammer Museum in Los
Angeles to witness the exhibition of Robert Crumb’s illustrations of the entire
book of Genesis. Crumb, that
iconic cartoonist of the counterculture era, stumbled into this enormous
undertaking over a period of many years.
In the end, he made it a straight cartoon illustration project, without
the kind of humor and exaggeration one might have expected from him. The display at the Hammer Museum shows
over 200 frames, which include every word of Genesis. The whole work is available in hardback book form as The
Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
Crumb spent a great deal of time researching the text,
studying images from the Near East and from previous cartoon and film
portrayals of the Genesis stories, and consulting with scholars. The result is a blend of familiar
biblical imagery with Crumb’s uniquely earthy and visceral depictions. God is a magnificently stern figure,
effulgent with impossibly long, white head and face hair: the classical
anthropomorphic figure of the divine.
Just what one might expect from an old-fashioned illustrated Bible story
book. But for every cliché, a
dozen astounding creative leaps are displayed. Only R. Crumb could depict the genealogical recitations of
Genesis 35 and 36 in such an intensely vivid, gritty, idiosyncratic
manner. Each named character is
depicted as a cartoon image of what could have been the person’s real
face. They aren’t idealized. They are ruggedly distinct from each
other in their expressions. More
than anything else about Crumb’s “Genesis”, it is the richly unique facial
features of each character that leap off the page and remind the viewer that
Genesis is a book about a long line of unique personalities – including the
imagined Godhead - each with particular proclivities, weaknesses, and
strengths. The unreal medium of
the cartoon, in Crumb’s skillful hand, makes the story seem more
real than I’ve ever seen it depicted.
I was amazed at my own strong emotional reaction to the images, an
effect heightened by the sheer number of images displayed on wall after wall of
the museum.
Indeed, little is left out of the depictions. Sweat, dirt, blood, dust, and smoke are
so carefully drawn that the viewer is almost as able to smell the scenes as to
see them. The stony landscape of
Palestine is depicted in grainy detail.
Women’s nipples show through their garments. The pores on men’s noses are dotted in with Crumb’s
pen. When the text says “he lay
with her”, the cartoons show exactly what that means. It’s as far from the aesthetic of a Sunday School play, with
costumes washed in Tide and dried with Bounce, as one can get.
In his
hand-written introduction, he says “I …do not believe the Bible is the ‘Word of
God’. I believe it is the words of
men.” But he goes on to say that
when the Hebrew Bible was compiled in its final form, “the stories of this
people, the Hebrews, were then something more than just stories”. Something of the divine emerged from
the book of Genesis through its recitation and writing. Likewise, a new manifestation of
divinity emerges in the way that Robert Crumb visualizes the words of the
text. The human potential for
transcendence is vividly portrayed in the combination of the words and the
artwork. His cartooning reminds us
that the characters of Genesis, like us all, are made, in the words of the
Psalmist, “little less than God” (Psalm 8: 5). Just as he beautifully depicts God giving the breath
of life to Adam, Crumb’s art oxygenates the whole book of Genesis. And with this work, R. Crumb himself
rises above the limitations of his reputation for sexual, satirical, and
psychedelic imagery. It’s a
breathtaking, and breath-giving, project - for him, and for the beholder.
