R. Crumb: Exhibit Review #2

The top floor of the ICA was dedicated almost entirely to R. Crumb's Underground, a show that focused on his comics drawn from the 60s to the present that dealt specifically with, as the catalogue puts it, "social satire, sex, blues and jazz music, mind-altering substances, autobiography, and biography." Perhaps I will betray myself by this observation, but it seemed as though a particular type of woman dominated the exhibit.  In fact, I noticed almost nothing else.  (Freud, shut up!)  His comics depicted this Amazon in various incarnations, and a sculpture of her in a sexual contortion loomed in the entrance to the second room.  In a series of twelve drawings, entitled, "How to Have Fun with a Strong Girl," R. Crumb himself, a scrawny, freckled, bespectacled little man, wrangles with a woman of epic proportions. Crumb, after maintaining his control throughout the grueling encounter, finally succumbs (pun absolutely intentional) once he realizes that his powerful partner has dozed off beneath him.

Because the framed pages are arranged in a grid, the observer must crouch down to read the final row of panels, making it impossible to seem nonchalant or disinterested by the sexual olympics depicted.  This is a very clever decision on the part of the curator.  By placing some of the cartoons well below eye level, the curator insured that those who witness the most graphic of the images make a conscious choice to do so.  I do not mean it protects the prudes--it actually converts them into voyeurs.  How can you be offended by images of R. Crumb cumming if you're the one who knelt down in the first place?