The Depression Graph © R. Crumb

A counter-cultural chronicle of modern times by Robert Crumb is on show at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London until May 22, 2005. It’s the most extensive exhibition yet of the seminal cartoonist's work, which comments on the last 45 years via a series of underground comix.

Approaching the Crumb-filled galleries I couldn’t get a memory out of my head. At a barbeque in my back garden, I introduced someone to my friend’s new girlfriend – a curvy young woman in a short skirt.

“Wow, I love your Robert Crumb legs!” he said to her, to my extreme alarm. Rather than chucking her fruit punch over him (or indeed a punch), she accepted the compliment.

Issues of The Complete Crumb. © R. Crumb

A dignified response, not entirely unreasonable. In the loving pencil strokes that outline Crumb’s buxom lasses and their rounded thighs (knees, and calves), there’s nothing less than a generous portion of beauty. If Crumb thinks his depictions of women are sexist – an oft-floated judgment on his work – perhaps he’s short-changing himself.

Cartoons lend themselves to caricature and the one person Crumb deprecates more than anyone else is himself. His cartoons often act as a confessional, with larger-than-life women the canvas for his fantasies. Or their body parts – for instance on one cover of Weirdo comic, a monstrous toad in an armchair coaxes a humungous, extending breast towards its mouth.

The randy character, Fritz the Cat. © R. Crumb

In an earlier display case, the cover of a school exercise book gives the pupil’s name as ‘S. Toad’. The subject is ‘SEX’. Crumb’s self-image as a toad can be disturbing, or cute. The large toad sitting, grinning, on the chest of a naked young nymph, is both at once, as is Fritz the Cat – the fluffy yet libidinous character who occupies other pages of the exercise book.

Another page in the book, dated 1962, contains a letter from the 19-year-old Crumb to Great Ugly Toad: “Everything in this scheme of life is a thousand times more horrible than it was when I had hope – everything is covered in vomit.”

A succinct ‘Depression Graph!’ earlier in the exhibition will have prepared you for such moments of despair with a colourful summary of Crumb’s major life events. So even the most un-Crumb-enlightened will know that a life-changing LSD trip and a move to San Francisco are around the corner.

Genius? He's up there with Cruikshank and Gillray. © R. Crumb

Social commentary is the other string to Crumb’s bow, earning him the title of a latter-day Brueghel. In Crumb’s City of the Future strip, things are so advanced: “You won’t have to shit anymore! Bowels will be removed at birth and a sanitary disposal unit installed.” The resulting couch potato-being bears a striking resemblance to a large proportion of present-day America.

Another biting critique comes in the form of the Abstract Expressionist Ultra Super Modernistic Comic. Those more versed in said style may interpret this strip as something more profound than a series of amusingly warped shapes.

City of the Future. No toilet paper necessary. © R. Crumb

Examples of a more realistic drawing style and less controversial subject matter are also given wall space, rounding up with a self-portrait depicting a bearded Crumb complete with third eye. Referring back to the graph, this is around the time he is meditating and his sex-drive has started to taper off slightly.

As an extra treat, visitors will be able to listen to the strains of the cartoonist’s Dixieland band, The Cheapsuit Serenaders, in the first room of the exhibition, which brings us to Crumb’s own comment on his early drawing days (from the introduction to the R. Crumb Handbook which accompanies the exhibition): “These jerky, animated cartoons in my mind were not beautiful, poetic or spiritual. They were like an out-of-tune piano that you couldn’t shut off.”