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Maxon crumb honored1/12/2024 ![]() ![]() The major source of family conflict, Maxon says, was Charles, the original artist in the family, who dominated him, made him a scapegoat and created such a fierce sibling rivalry that Maxon was too intimidated to draw until his late 20s. I found that some of those extremes, those conditions, still existed." Instead, he found that his isolation, fear of success and extreme way of life were all reactions to forces that were "nurtured within the family. We think sometimes that we're finished with our family upbringing and it's not affecting us that much anymore." ![]() Seeing the film, he says in his tiny, fourth-floor room in a noisy Tenderloin dive, "made me rethink a lot of the things about my family. It was the movie "Crumb," which opened to acclaim in 1995 and won several awards, that prompted Maxon to take his art more seriously and make a shift in his austere lifestyle. He says he'll continue to meditate and beg for spare change on Market Street ("I regard that as work") but otherwise intends to support himself with his drawings and the stories he writes. Maxon, who appears Saturday at the Cartoon Art Museum to sign copies of "Maxon's Poe," was so encouraged by early reaction to his work that he chose last month to cut off the welfare payments he's received since 1974. But while Poe's case was pure tragedy, hopefully my brother's is not." NO MORE WELFARE Poe, he writes, "was tracked by hell hounds, and so indeed is the artist. Robert, who made his reputation on Zap Comix in the '60s and now lives in France, has written a preface to the book in which he states that Poe's "morbid, flamboyant text" is "uncannily well-suited" to Maxon's "visceral, nightmarish drawings." "Maxon's Poe," a short volume that combines Crumb's drawings with Edgar Allan Poe stories, was recently published by Word Play Publications of San Francisco ($17.95), and reveals a startling talent and dazzling discipline that equal that of his celebrated brother. After years of living in the shadow of Robert, and before that suffering Charles' domination and abuse, Maxon is establishing himself as an artist of distinction. ![]() With his marginal existence, haunted eyes and shell-shocked expression, Maxon hardly seemed a candidate for recovery.Īnd yet today, at 51, Maxon is on an upswing. And then there's youngest brother Maxon, a Tenderloin beggar who has been known to sleep on a bed of nails. ![]()
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