Dan Nadel on Robert Crumb, with Elisabeth Sherman

Dan Nadel on Robert Crumb, in conversation with Elisabeth Sherman

Tuesday, May 13, 6:30 pm, the Skylight Room, 9th Floor

The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

More than just a biography of an iconic cartoonist, Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure, Crumb spans the pressures of 1950s suburban America and Crumb’s highly dysfunctional early family life; the history of comics and graphic satire; 20th century popular music; the world of the counterculture; the birth of underground comic books in 1960s San Francisco with Crumb’s Zap Comix; the economic challenges and dissolution of the hippie dream; and the path Robert Crumb blazed through it all.

Written with Crumb’s cooperation, this fascinating, rollicking book takes in seven decades of Crumb’s iconic works, including Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, and his final book-length comic of The Book of Genesis; capturing, in the process, the essence of an extraordinary artist and his times.

Dan Nadel is a former fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. His previous books include, It’s Life as a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945–1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969. Nadel has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award–winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.

Elisabeth Sherman is the Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the International Center of Photography (ICP). At ICP, she has curated exhibitions including ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845–2019, David Seidner: Fragments, 1977-99 and Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño, the first NYC survey of multidisciplinary artist Muriel Hasbun. Sherman joined ICP from the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project (2019–2022), and Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950 -2019 and the Whitney’s presentation of Zoe Leonard: Survey.

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