Legendary Artist Robert Crumb Opens Up About How Cartoons Rescued Him During a Crucial Time in His Life

Legendary underground comics artist Robert Crumb opened up to Dutch film critic Christian Monggaard in an interview that took place during the Louisiana Literature festival in Humlebæk, Denmark. Crumb shared how cartoons rescued him during a particularly crucial time in his life, how these illustrations helped him realize his social limitations yet express himself and how he found he could support himself as a comic illustrator.

Crumb also explained how some of his comics crossed a number of lines, almost losing friends due to the subject matter and how a right-wing organization mistook his commentary as his own. Crumb stated that he was playing around with sensitive issues to get them out there, but he did not subscribe to them. It was with this situation in mind that he also warned against censorship and what it leads to.

The artwork I did that used those images and expressed those kinds of feelings, I stand by it… I still think that that’s something that needed to be said and needed to be done…It probably hurts some people’s feelings to see those images, but still, I had to put it out there…putting down anything that goes against the correct line you know is there political correctness and it becomes a suppressive problem. It could even lead to censorious policies in government and stuff like that and they don’t realize that they’re playing into the hands of some very bad people.

via Open Culture