After his comic “Mouse” was removed from the school curriculum in a Tennessee county, Art Spiegelman took up the fight from New York last Tuesday against what he saw as a reactionary American society (FAZ February 9).

His colleague and friend Robert Crumb gave up this fight more than thirty years ago: in 1991, the comic artist, born in 1943, who had earned worldwide fame and hype not only through the graphic quality of his art, but also through its political and sexual frankness, moved , with his wife Aline Kominsky Crumb, who was five years his junior, and their daughter Sophie, who was ten at the time, from California to France (a delicate tax problem had also fueled the decision).

In the comic "Merci au Revoir", which appeared a little later, the family reviewed their first year in their new home.

The fifteen-page story was a collaborative effort between the Crumbs.

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

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The originals of these fifteen pages can now be seen in Paris for a month and a half, together with around a hundred other works in a sales exhibition at the New York gallery David Zwirner's representative there.

But that's not the real sensation.

"Sauve qui peut" is the name of the show - save yourself if you can - and the title also includes the name of the southern French town where the Crumbs live.

Robert Crumb hardly ever leaves Sauve, his fear of publicity is legendary.

But he came to Paris for a day.

And not only he, the whole family is there, with Aline as the vanguard, who entertains the visitors on this Thursday morning, only to spot her husband half an hour later and call in: "You can come, it's almost over." And he comes in

with daughter Sophie and her children, a boy and a girl.

The way they all stand next to each other, one might think that one was watching a game of puzzles from the 1950s and present, the small children look so much like their grandparents.

Three independent artists united

But then Robert Crumb is gone astray again, out of the focus of attention and behind a table display case with family photos, which he studies attentively.

It doesn't matter that he's doing it from the wrong side, he needs the distance.

He hasn't said a single word yet.

But in front of the pictures it will be easier later.

Because the focus isn't just on him.

It is a collaborative exhibition by Robert, Aline and Sophie Crumb.

A special case in art history.

Not because there would otherwise have been no artist families, but because they actually make art together here.

But also autonomous.

Just like on a wall that is staged as a veritable tsunami of images: more than fifty drawings by the three Crumbs hang here in a deliberately chaotic way,

from Robert's early notebook pages from the 1960s to small self-portraits by Aline from five decades and recent drawings by Sophie.

And a painting by Robert.

Painting?

Robert Crumb comes into the story: "Yes, I do it again and again.

You mean nothing to me.

Other people ask me to, so I draw some.

For example, for someone with whom I could exchange a picture for old 78 records.” Crumb is a fanatical shellac record collector, as is his entire love of art from before the Second World War.

"What came after that, Abstract Expressionism, doesn't interest me at all.

De Kooning?

Bah!

I like the early Picasso or German Expressionism: Dix, Grosz.

And then also Christian Schad.

The painter I like to look at most at the moment is Kandinsky.” You notice it in the flood of images: a watercolor from 2021 takes up a typical Kandinsky composition.

The colored ink drawing "Spots" from 2019 hangs five meters further down on the left,