God in Print

How do you draw God's picture?

Famous underground illustrator R. Crumb took a marvelous, gutsy stab at the question on Oct. 19, when "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" hit the bookshelves.

His antic style is channeled into a gruelingly faithful 224 pages. Murder, incest, power struggles, family fights, and betrayals - it's all graphically rendered.

The results are subversive and affirming at the same time. Subversive because they dodge none of the text's ugly incidents or confusing lurches of tone and doctrine.

Although he first found fame as a rebellious figure, Crumb's work as a whole ranges far more widely.

In tackling Adam and Eve and all that follows, he follows centuries of tradition.

The power of the graven image cuts both ways. Prohibitions against and mistrust of images is strong in monotheistic cultures.

The word "iconoclast" means "image breaker"; it stems from a struggle over the use of images in Christian Byzantium in medieval times. During the Reformation, too, statues, images and altars were shattered, torn apart or burned.Islam has long frowned on images as well.

During the three-day 1977 Hanafi Siege in Washington, D.C. 12 members of an Islamic extremist group took 149 people hostage, and killed two. One of the incident's causes was its leader's opposition to the pending release of Moustapha Akkad's "Mohammad, Messenger of God," aka "The Messenger," aka "The Message," a feature film about the founder of Islam. (Ironically, in the film the prophet was never shown, and his speech never heard, in accordance with the strictures of the Hadith.) Yet the Bible, like most other religious texts, is a bottomless font of visual inspiration - and, particularly in Christian history, the use of visual storytelling aids, such as murals, paintings, panels, stained-glass windows . . . and illustrated Bibles.

The fundamental artist for me in this tradition is French illustrator Gustave Dore (1832-1883).

The huge, impossibly heavy Bible in my grandparents' home was tempting to pore through not because of the crabbed, unreadable Fraktur typeface verses but because of the staggering visions of the artist, whose engraving abilities are historically unmatched.

The tormented physicality of Dore's figures and the fantastic landscapes in which they coil and stretch are endlessly fascinating, and they drew me into the words behind the pictures. As intended.

Next: Picture Stories from the Bible!

Bottom three images: Statues at the cathedral of St. Martin in Utrecht, the Netherlands, damaged by Reformation iconoclasts, Dore's Expulsion from the Garden, Dore's Deluge, and the trailer to "The Message."

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