If you’re in London this week, there’s still time, just, to catch the last days of an exhibition of art by American cartoonist Robert Crumb at CASSIUS&Co., a gallery of art and rare books from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Robert Crumb: Boswell’s London and Other Diaries, curated by Martin Schlombs, closing 31st January 2026, is the first exhibition in London dedicated to the artist since Robert Crumb: Art & Beauty at David Zwirner Gallery in 2016.
The discovery of James Boswell’s London Journal (1762), which had been hidden among his private papers and thus spared the censorship of his relatives, was a revelation to Robert Crumb, caustic draughtsman of the counterculture of the 1960s. Here he found not only a bawdy satire of a place and time that reflected his own work, but in the figure of Boswell himself a kindred spirit, spiritually caught between the ‘high’ concerns of his literary and cultural milieu and the ‘low’ of his own guttural, fiendishly hedonistic desire.
The five-part set of drawings Crumb made to illustrate Boswell’s journal, which mark his first mature foray into adapting a literary work, forms the heart and basis of this exhibition.
Presented in full alongside a group of more personally diaristic drawings, this exhibition argues for a reassessment of Crumb the artist, one that looks past his notorious salaciousness to see one of the finest draughtsmen and cultural commentators of his century. What emerges is not the work of a devious pornographer but an insightful, anxious and disarmingly self-aware man of his time, one who compulsively confesses himself with abject honesty, and in doing so, can’t help but skewer the society that produced him.
Robert Crumb: Boswell’s London and Other Diaries, which includes art intended for adults, is presented alongside a bookshelf exhibition about James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and the cultural history of satire.
• Robert Crumb: Boswell’s London and Other Diaries runs until Saturday 31st January 2026 at CASSIUS&Co., 63 Kinnerton Street, London, SW1X 8ED | Open Wednesday – Saturday, 10.00 am – 5.00 pm | Web: cassiusandco.com
A fully-illustrated catalogue with an introduction by curator Martin Schlombs has also been published alongside the exhibition. You can download a digital version here
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Comic Art, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Events, Exhibitions
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