The Friends of Ruth Schwartz (Collection of membership cards, Arm & Leg pamphlet, and two posters)

[Berkeley?]: [No Publisher], 1972. A small collection of five materials relating to a group about which we can find no information, The Friends of Ruth Schwartz. Insofar as it existed it appears to have come from Berkeley, CA circa 1972 and to have originated in a detourned image of a 1969 R. Crumb comic, Despair, with its cover of a woman numbly wondering aloud, "Why bother?" Most likely the group was a fictitious entity created by an artist whose pseudonym was Joe Normal. All the materials came in a large, loose archive of Bay Area radical ephemera and periodicals from the 1960s and '70s.

The only item of the five we could find a record for is a single-page pamphlet titled "Vote?" by a group calling itself ARM & LEG for Anarchist Revolutionary Movement / Libertarian Extremist Groups, printed in Berkeley in 1972. Other copies in the trade appear to have been folded once, creating four pages; ours, however, has not been folded. Importantly, there is an image of Crumb's "Why bother?" lady on the verso. Clearly the artist of this pamphlet was involved in the creation of the other materials.

Another 8.5" x 11" sheet consists of seven membership cards for The Friends of Ruth Schwartz, all but one with an identical number (23402). They are printed with metallic silver and purple ink. One card is missing.Blank verso.

A similar sheet of cards printed on blue cardstock with purple nonmetallic ink is complete. Its verso has a single large image of the "Why bother?" lady printed in its center in orange.

The lady returns for a multicolor version on newsprint, numbered 008 and signed "Joe Normal." Chipped corners and light staining.

The final print of the "Why bother?" lady is also in color, printed in metallic ink. Some small stains, creased corner.

An interesting small collection of art that might be one of very few extant proofs for the (non-? semi-?) existence of the mysterious Friends of Ruth Schwartz.