Artist illustrates the Bible's Books of Genesis

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll are usually great ways to sell a book. In his latest effort, artist Robert Crumb tries to illustrate the creation of sex and the creation of drugs to cash in on that.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated is a long-term project by Robert Crumb. The graphic journey is blatantly sexualized, bloody and potentially blasphemous.

It’s a rare thing to see an illustrated edition of any book of the Judeo-Christian Bible that includes masturbation and graphic death, let alone one right after the other. Crumb does this with the story of Onan, though Onan’s death for defying God and “spilling his seed” wasn’t a lightning bolt – it was a large rock to the head from a particularly nasty-looking man.

It’s also rare to see a depiction of Adam and Eve both fully nude and having sex. Crumb’s illustrations include slitting throats, circumcisions, impaling, drunken nudity and incest resulting in pregnancy.

Most illustrated versions of Genesis leave out how Lot’s daughters got their father drunk and essentially raped him to get pregnant. Not Crumb’s version.

Crumb’s version had exposed breasts and dripping sweat, even.

Crumb has a long history of being subversive. He created the titular character for the first X-rated animated picture, Fritz the Cat.

Yes, he was involved in anthropomorphized cat sex on the silver screen, which earned nearly $100 million at the box office in 1972. In a similar vein, he anthropomorphized the serpent in Eden.

He made the snake just about equal to men, complete with arms and legs and bipedalism. The only differences were the skin and a tail. Crumb knows how to be subversive.

That said, Crumb’s Book of Genesis Illustrated is enthralling. The text is slightly changed from a translation by Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, though in the introduction Crumb admits to taking a few liberties.

He also included a few spots of personal research, where he looked into word origins and included comparisons of them to other modern translations.

In other words, if he thought something was unclear, he worked to clarify it. Some would say change it.

A scene that stands out is the banishment from Eden, where God places cherubim outside the path to the tree of Life. These cherubim are not babies, they’re winged beasts that look like a cross between dogs and lions. It’s a far more traditional perception of what cherubim look like.

When Lot offers his daughters for the men of Sodom to “know,” it’s clear the intent is sex.

Make no mistake, though. In Crumb’s mind, these are interesting and culturally significant stories.

In fact, Crumb’s depictions of sex and violence border on the pornographic, and several of his reinterpreted scenes omit portions of the original text. He lists omissions and impressions in his conclusion.

Ah, but the illustrations! The hundreds of different people depicted in Crumb’s version of Genesis are all different. There are differences in personality, in perception, in visible intelligence and most tellingly, in appearance.

Somehow, Crumb managed to create a face for all these people, individually, without repeating a specific face.

His illustrations are pretty shocking, with depictions of large-breasted women that are characteristic of his style, and a thread of gender equality running through everything.

Somehow, in his ommissions and illustrations, Crumb manages to make his women look like sex objects while being in far more control than is typically expected from women in Genesis.

This begs the question of why. Why would anyone take on an enormous project like this, with such room for controversy? Why challenge gender roles now, especially since his older works all carry accusations of sexism and racism?

Crumb is looking for attention. Genesis is an attempt to get people angry, interested, talking or reminiscing. The introduction involves a claim that Crumb “approached this as a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.”

Creating a visual for any holy text is a traditional means of spreading it to people. There’s a lot of power in the illustration. That means there’s a lot of power in the illustrator’s hands.

Corruption practically oozes off the pages, and since Genesis has so much inherent power as the accepted truth of creation for millions of people, that power is difficult to ignore.

Crumb has something great here from an entertainment perspective. It’s amazing how quickly a read it was, even looking at all the individual illustrations bit by bit. He’s going to sell books. The question is whether or not he should.

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