Nicholas Burman
, April 3rd, 2021 09:26
While Robert Crumb’s style and dedication to his generation’s underground comix artists has inspired a huge array of artists from a variety of backgrounds and of numerous identities, for decades his depictions and framing of women and his adoption of racist stereotypes have been under fire
Crumb’s World, 2021. Photo by Alex Casto. Courtesy of David Zwirner Books
In 2016 Fantagraphics, who have republished much of Crumb’s work, released a book about its own history titled
We Told You So: Comics as Art, and the appearance of Crumb’s work in the context of the art book market (
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David, Lucas, and Rudolf Zwirner with
Sylvester (2001) by Richard Serra, Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland, 2018. Courtesy David Zwirner Books.
Let’s start at the beginning. What led you to open your art gallery and, eventually, the fair that became Art Cologne?
After the Second World War, it was very empty in Germany. There were just about ten or 12 dealers after all the Jewish dealers had to leave the country and most of the great dealers were Jewish.
At the end of the war, there were fantastic people who came back into politics really fabulous people who spent years and years away during the war. They were really interested in bringing culture, in a democratic way, into the public. These people were really democratic and they suffered under Hitler like Kurt Hackenberg, who was in charge of cultural affairs in Cologne. He was such an inventive figure. Without him, there would have been no way to organize an art fair [like Kunstmarket Köln, which became Art Cologne]. Looking back