CRUMB, Robert
Letter with drawing to photographer Charles Gatewood
"Gatewood picked up where Diane Arbus left off.” - Robert Crumb
CRUMB, Robert
ALS with drawing to Photographer Charles Gatewood
Circa 1970
Black ink on paper
9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (24.1 x 19.1 cm)
16 x 13 1/2 inches, framed, (40.6 x 34.3 cm)
Robert Crumb, regarded as one of the founders of the Underground comix scene of the 1960s, has a distinctive drawing style that is solely his own, as seen in the drawing on this letter. Often critical and satirical, his drawings depict a subversive view of mainstream America. Charles Gatewood has photographed the American underground with a lens that captured everything from the slums of 1970s Lower East Side in NYC to the affluence of Wall Street and luminaries such as Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs and Andy Warhol. Gatewood’s first book Sidetripping was a collaboration with William S. Burroughs. In this letter, Crumb thanks Gatewood for sending a copy of Sidetripping and praises him as a photographer he actually likes, including him along the likes of Diane Arbus and August Sander. Crumb’s drawings and Gatewood’s photographs provide an account of the grotesque, surreal and liberated American underground in two different mediums.
NFS