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Libel Arts: The Word According to R. Crumb

With the imminent October 19 release of his highly-anticipated graphic work, The Book of Genesis Illustrated (W.W. Norton & Company, $24.95 cloth), the Robert Crumb brand returns to the front racks of comic shops and book stores everywhere. Following the trend of producing highly stylized, detailed renditions of non-traditional “comic” storylines—such as those about music and comics based on literary figures like Franz Kafka—Crumb delivers an obsessively faithful, elegant portrayal of the book of Genesis.

Crumb spent five years rendering his new creation and it certainly shows. Detailed in his familiar black and white, 224 pages reveal the entire book of Genesis, complete with nearly every word taken from the King James Version and Robert Alter’s new translation, Genesis: Translation and Commentary. Including an illustrated map depicting the world of Abraham, circa 2000 to 1600 B.C.E., Crumb relentlessly recreates the text, geography and images of this canonical text.

What is most fascinating about The Book of Genesis Illustrated is that Crumb truly lets the Bible speak for itself. Never breaching criticism or even satire, Crumb recreates the stories of Abraham, Noah, Jacob and Joseph nearly verbatim. However, in re-contextualizing the revered text, the reader glimpses a new understanding of the life and times depicted in Genesis…and perhaps gains a better sense of the nature of the Hebrew God. Mirroring the text with his own brand of illustration and expression, we see the terror on Abraham’s face when he is admonished to sacrifice his own son, the confusion and despair of Noah’s neighbors when they are prevented from boarding his ark…the carnal cunning and mischievousness of Lot’s daughters when they make him drunk on wine in order to seduce him.

Through Crumb’s art, a clear image of the Biblical era emerges: roaming patriarchal tribes moving across the earth, young warriors and elderly kings jostling for maidens and harlots alike, violent battles for revenge and prestige around every corner—a God that is both fickle, vengeful and jealous. Of course, neither are the women of Genesis spared, for Crumb bestows his familiar take on the female form, rendering women voluptuous sexualized entities who tempt and inspire, and who all too often serve as the victims of men’s lust for power and procreation.

 
Although Crumb reveals that he does not hold the Bible as the inspired word of God, he does admit that it is truly an “inspired text” which has held sway over Western literature and politics for millenniums. Whether his readers are believers or not, The Book of Genesis Illustrated will only help us all to realize the truth.

All photos are the property of W.W. Norton & Company

Libel Arts: Birds and Words

If you are a lover of Charles Harper and his abstract, geometrical-take on nature and birds, the recently published limited edition Charles Harper’s Birds and Words, published by Ammo Books, is right up your alley…or tree trunk, or beak, or what have you.

As a re-imagining of the original Birds and Words, the limited edition version comes in a cloth-bound hardcover with a matching fabric-wrapped clamshell box. You can get the book in a choice of four colors, and each comes with its own matching silkscreen print. The book is beautiful, and Harper’s art is brilliantly reproduced.

The serigraphs are accompanied by Harper’s own words describing the scene captured in his art. While reading through the pages of the book, one gets a sense of Harper’s humor, playfulness, astute observational skills and his ecologically-minded world view. The book is just as much a celebration of wildlife as it is a eulogy to those creatures who have sadly vanished from the earth.

For such a wonderful book, you know you’re gonna have to pay…100 bucks to be exact. However, with 152 pages, a silkscreen print and clamshell box, the limited edition is well worth it. And if you buy a copy, at least you can take comfort that there is only 999 other copies out there.

Libel Arts: Seth is George Sprott (but not really)

With his highly self-reflexive (and some might say, self-absorbed) graphic memoir, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, Seth (aka Gregory Gallant) chronicled his life-long passion for vintage comic strips and artists and his quest to discover the identity of an obscure, yet talented cartoonist who appeared in the New Yorker. With his mid-century style of cartooning and sophisticated color palette, Seth has become one of the more recognized comic artists in North America.

Now, Seth returns with George Sprott (1894-1975), the story told through a series of interviews, flashbacks and personal anecdotes. As always, Seth delivers his art with humor and poignancy, and his inking is second-to-none.

Here's a preview of one of the book's pages:

George Sprott (1894-1975) will be hitting stores this May, and will be published by Drawn and Quarterly.

Naked Words

With such a heavy-saturation of all things dripping with libido on TV and film, why not extend the courtesy to the printed page and see if it can’t raise your, um…blood pressure. On the horizon are three worthwhile works that deal with the subject matter that most interests nearly everyone: S.E.X. If you’re looking for something risqué, something tantalizing or something X-rated that you can enjoy while flying in a plane or sitting in the dentist's waiting room, try these out for size.

I Did It for Science (cover above)
By Reverend Jen Miller
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
April 1, 2009

I Did It for Science chronicles Reverend Jen Miller's two-year career as a sex columnist for nerve.com. Her columns detail various “sexperiments,” such as working as a nude girl, attending fellatio school, and reaching Zen during tantric sex.

Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Publisher: Cleis Press
Date: March 1, 2009

Collecting the stories of several writers, Do Not Disturb delves into the most intimate moments in the naughtiest of places: hotel rooms. And you thought you were the only one who felt indulgent on the 13th floor.

Hos, Hookers, Call-Girls, and Rent Boys - Sex Workers and Prostitutes: Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex
Edited by David Henry Sterry / R. J. Martin, Jr.
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Date: July 1, 2009

Borne from SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation), a San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to helping people who have worked in the sex business, Hos, Hookers, Call-Girls and Rent Boys collects the autobiographical writings of sex workers, who leave no bed sheet—or body—unturned. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

B is for Beer

On April 21, Ecco (the same folks who publish Leonard Cohen and Charles Bukowski) will be releasing Tom Robbins’ ninth novel and first work since 2005. The book is called B is for Beer, and apparently, it’s an hallucinatory ode to beer, children and all those celestial mysteries that intrigue us all. Robbins, who is perhaps best known for his smash 1976 classic Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and its 1980 follow-up, Still Life With Woodpecker, is making the switch to Ecco with his latest work after leaving Bantam Books, his publisher for almost 30 years.

For Robbins fans, the upcoming novel will surely be a treat...the subtitles read that it's "A Children's Book for Grown-ups" and "A Grown-up Book for Children." Either way, we win.

And just to broaden the horizons, here is the original trailer for Gus Van Sant's film-adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, released in 1993, starring a very young, and beautiful, Uma Thurman.

Libel Arts: David Weidman

Out this week is the new book, The Whimsical Work of David Weidman, written and compiled by the artist himself. Weidman began his career as an animator for Hanna Barbara in the ’50s, painting backgrounds and influencing the style of many Hanna Barbara cartoons of the period. His style, easily recognizable by the now grown-up children of several generations, is not only beautiful—it’s iconic.

A printmaker, ceramist, font designer, painter, cartoonist, and silk screener, Weidman has been working like mad for the last 50 years. At 87 years old, it’s high time that Weidman got his due respect via this career retrospective published by Ginko Press. Check it out (or, just buy it).

Libel Arts: Wayne White

Having worked on “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” in 1986 as a set and puppet designer (winning three Emmy awards for his work) and also art directing Peter Gabriel’s smash-hit video, Big Time, Wayne White’s career has been both prolific and evolving.

These days, however, White is turning heads with his novel, though some say trendy, re-workings of cheap landscape paintings found in thrift stores and yard sales across the U.S. Taking banal landscape paintings and then overlaying his own phrases and lettering onto the work, White creates new art from old—and in many cases—unremarkable paintings. White’s work is lately getting placed in not only galleries, but fine art museums as well. And if you get the chance, definitely make a trip to see the work with your own two eyes.

And if you have never seen White’s glossy 3-D paintings, perhaps you’re familiar with another one of his works…the album cover for Lambchop ’s 2000 Nixon LP, featuring White’s painting of the same name.

 

And just for old time’s sake, how about a little Big Time for good measure? Long live Peter Gabriel: