Vox Tablet

Blonde and Botoxed in Miami

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, half of the legendary comics duo, submits to a high-hair makeover for the sake of art

June 14, 2012
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Showing Cleavage. Ballpoint pen, watercolor, and mixed media on paper. Kominsky-Crumb appears on the left.(Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, New York)
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Showing Cleavage. Ballpoint pen, watercolor, and mixed media on paper. Kominsky-Crumb appears on the left.(Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, New York)

In the 1970s, Aline Kominsky-Crumb pioneered a let-it-all-hang-out style of autobiographical comics. Her influence continues to this day, in the work of graphic novelists like Allison Bechdel or, perhaps more aptly, filmmaker Lena Dunham, creator and star of the much-discussed HBO series Girls. Kominsky-Crumb’s other claim to fame is her husband, R. Crumb, the macher of underground comics. The Crumbs have been living in a village in France for the past two decades, collaborating and pursuing their own independent projects. Now Kominsky-Crumb has a show opening at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York. The exhibit documents, with drawings and video, a trip she and fellow artist Dominique Sapel took to Miami—not as tourists, but as participant-observers of the local culture. More specifically, they went there to get makeovers from Cookie Rosen, Kominsky-Crumb’s mother’s beautician. Then they hit the street to see how it felt to be made up, blown out, and lifted. On a recent afternoon, Kominsky-Crumb gave independent producer Eric Molinsky a tour of the upcoming exhibit. [Running time: 8:22.]

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