A LETTER TO SI LEWEN

ABOUT THE PARADE

I find your work The Parade

very impressive from a
purely artistic standpoint.
Furthermore, I find it a
real merit to counteract
the tendencies towards war
through the medium of
art. Nothing can equal the
psychological effect of real
artneither factual descriptions nor intellectual
discussion.
It has often been said
that art should not be used
to serve any political or
otherwise practical goals.
But I could never agree
with this point of view.
It is true that it is utterly
wrong and disgusting if
some direction of thought
and expression is forced
upon the artist from the
outside. But strong emoAlbert Einstein, photograph by Lotte Jacobi, 1938.
tional tendencies of the
artist himself have often given birth to truly great works of art. One has only to
think of Swifts Gullivers Travels and Daumiers immortal drawings directed against
the corruption in French politics of his time. Our time needs you and your work!

Si Lewen, a Polish Jewish painter born right as World War I ended, was brought up in
Germany. He fled as soon as Hitler came to power, eventually arriving in the U.S. when
he was sixteen. As an American soldier, he was part of the invasion at Normandy Beach,
and was at Buchenwald right after it was liberated. Returning to the U.S. wounded
and shaken, he resumed his life as an artist and made an impassioned narrative suite
of drawings called The Parade about the recurring drumbeat of war that lures every
generation into devastation.
In 1953, the photographer Lotte Jacobi exhibited the drawings in her New York
City gallery. In 1957, H. Bittner and Company published The Parade: A Story in 55
Drawings by Si Lewen in a limited edition of one thousand copies, and in 2007 a small
fiftieth-anniversary facsimile edition was produced by the International Institute for
Restorative Practices in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
This new edition of The Parade has been reshot from the original artwork, with eight
added drawings selected from a sheaf of about forty outtakes that recently turned up in the
IIRPs vast holdings of Si Lewens canvases, writings, and drawings. They were reinserted
into The Parades continuity under Si Lewens supervision. The artist was delighted with
the idea that this edition would be presented as an accordion-fold book, realizing his
childhood dream of pictures sitting close to each other so they could have a conversation.
The verso side of this volume unfolds Si Lewens singular life and art.

Art Spiegelman
New York City
2016

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Princeton, New Jersey

August 13, 1951
Details from the Odyssey series.
LEFT: no. 110, For God. RIGHT: no. 111, For Country.
Mixed media on canvas, 20" x 30", undated.

Outtake drawings from The Parade, 12 x 18. Charcoal, crayon, and tusche on gessoed board, c. 1950.

SI LEWEN IN CONVERSATION
Excerpt from an interview with Steve Grieger
and Laura Mirsky on July 27, 2007, in
New Paltz, New York
SI: When I started The Parade, I was very much taken
by the work of a Belgian artistFrans Masereel. Masereel
began this whole process, which has now exploded
with the popularity of the comic book. Comic books
are related to The Parade and The Procession and other
works like that because they are all pictorial narratives.
In Masereels work, there are no words. In the art that I
do, there are also no words. Just the picture itself is the
narrativegoing from one painting to the next, they

tell a story. But its a story in pictures. Frans Masereel

was a woodcut artistI have several of his books
and was a great influence on me. His wordless books
tell stories, but theres no variation from one woodcut
picture to another. Its black and white, black and white,
and there are no in-between shadings whatsoever. So
the rhythmthe pace, the tonalityalways remains
the same. When I started working on The Parade, I felt
that I needed more dramapictorial drama. A variation
between something thats dark and something thats
light. So The Parade goes from very lightthe linear
story begins as cheering children join a crowd to catch a
glimpse of a military paradehardly anything at all, very
light. And then the pictures get darker and darker, and

they gradually get very dark. And then it returns again

into light. Now that could only be doneI devised my
own way of doing it, where I made gesso boards. You
know, illustration boards coated with gesso. And then I
painted over that, and I would then start to scratch out.
I would scratch out the gesso, giving it depth, pictorial
depth, that I could vary from very light to very dark,
and everything in-between. This pictorial drama
in combination with the subject matterwas very
important to me. To tell the story of The Parade, I needed
to sequence light pencil drawings that would progress
into pictures with areas of intense tonality, only to return
to light again at the end with the embrace of a boy in his
mothers arms.

ART: Is The Parade the first time you placed your pictures
in dialogue with each other as multiple images?

visual dialogue; an inter-relatedness. Theres also a third

dimensiona dimension of timea time element.

SI: That started when I was practically an infant in

Germany, being taken to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum
by my parents . . . ah, I still remember that. I could barely
walk. When I saw the paintings there, I was flabbergasted.
It was like some heavenly revelation, all those paintings
together. The only thing that bothered me was that there
was so much space between the paintings.

HILLARY: Im really interested in the formal stuff you

were talking aboutthe importance of time and space
with regard to the paintings in the museum. Can you
elaborate a little bit more about how that applies to a
work like The Parade?

ART: Too long a walk for a little kid, huh?

SI: Not a long walk, there was literally too much empty
space. In my mind, I tried to push them closer together.
My parents told me I started talking to the paintings, and
then asked, What did you say to them? I said, Well,
they speak to me. So I spoke back. And what I was saying
was, Move closer together. I wanted them closer so they
could have a conversation. These were not just paintings,
they were living things. They happened to hold still, you
know, but they were living things. I felt, or imagined, that
they were communicating. That they were in some kind of
pictorial dialogue. In The Parade, and in my other books,
that kind of pictorial dialogue takes place.
Si Lewen, photograph by Lotte Jacobi, 1952.

Interview conducted by Art Spiegelman and

Hillary Chute on March 1, 2015, at the Foulkeways
Retirement Community in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania
ART: You said you received a woodcut novel by Frans
Masereel as a thirteenth-birthday gift.
SI: It was a gift from my fathera copy of Passionate
Journey.

HILLARY: Between the different images?

SI: Yes. Some of the altar pieces I saw at the museum
influenced my art. They are usually composed ofusually,
but not alwaysthree images. We have the Annunciation
very often, and of course, the Crucifixion, and then the
Resurrection. This element of pictorial art as a way of
communicating the storya pictorial story, mind you,
not a verbal storyis what fascinates me. Its apparent
in The Parade and in A Journeyanother one of my
picture storiesand in ongoing series and sequences
of my paintings Ive done over the years. Theres this

SI: Its based on the same notion and conceptthe

dimension of time, really. The other dimension. Everything
is not just singular . . . I do singular paintings too, but my
later work is mostly series. Basically most of them have a
pluralistic relationship of one thing to another. A dialogue
that is strictly pictorial.
ART: Did you have an idea for the shape of the narrative
of The Parade or did it evolve as you worked on it?
SI: I had a very clear idea of how the narrative should start
outwith childrenprobably remembering the way I
loved to play as a kid, holding a toy pistol or a wooden
sword. German children were fascinated with America
and the whole cowboy-and-Indian narrative. I started by
making little sketches. I would draw figures, several figures
on a page, and then cut them out, playing around with the
figures, having them interact by positioning them on top
of one another. Really close . . . I mean so close that they
would touch. I was trying to make a series of paintings that
would feel like a movie. As long as I can remember, I have
been fascinated by movies. My parents, on the other hand,
they looked at movies as, oh, that cheap entertainment
stuff, you know. For me, it didnt matter what it was.
I just loved the interaction. The movement and the
dimensionalitythe movie itself, that didnt matter.
ART: We were talking about how Frans Masereel was
really important to you. You know, when Thomas Mann

was asked what his favorite movie was, he said Passionate

Journey.
SI: Exactly. Its that other dimension. Side-by-side images
that evoke a movie.

photographed the original drawings, and put together

a kind of dummy book out of it. And Lotte said, You
should send it to Einstein. So I did. I wrapped it up and
sent it off to Albert Einstein. I didnt expect anything to
come of it.

SI: That could have been one of the considerations.

ART: But it wasnt your decision one way or the other?
You didnt think about it?
SI: I dont think so.

ART: And Masereel was influenced by several things, one

of which was the woodcuts that were coming back from
Japan, and the other thing was the silent cinema, clearly.
SI: Yes, right. It all goes together. Its all related.
ART: You received a copy of Masereels first book at
about the same time you were doing the Bible paintings
for your bar mitzvah project. Did Masereel actually
influence the kind of pictures you were making? Were
you looking at him and saying, Oh, this is how I can do
Adam and Eve?
SI: I dont think so. By this time I was already fascinated
by the movies and in creating a dialogue of images.
HILLARY: So how did Albert Einstein encounter your
work?
SI: At the time, his official photographer was Lotte Jacobi.
Shes made quite a name more recently as one of the first
women photographersand the first photographer to
do abstract photography. She was also running a gallery
across the street from the Museum of Modern Art in New
York City. Thats how I got into several exhibitions there.
So when I finished The Parade, I showed Lotte the original
drawings for it.

ART: Did you once say that you had some drawings at the
Museum of Modern Art?
SI: Paintings. They put on a traveling show of new artists,
and they included my work. And they sent the exhibition
around to various museums. The Parade was also shown as
projected drawings in a regular movie theater.

ART: When you made the book for Einstein, was it one
picture on each page or every other?
SI: It was one picture on each page.

HILLARY: Who was the first publisher of The Parade

back in 1957?

HILLARY: Thinking about your work and about some

of the themes that come up, what do you view as the
difference between books like The Parade or A Journey and
the serial paintings that you have done?

SI: H. Bittner and Company. They were a publisher in

Germany of art books, and they started publishing over
here in the States. But I dont recall how they came to
publish it.

SI: Well, there really isnt that much difference. Time

passes by, just as it does in the movies. You have a
situation that changes; my paintings arent meant to be
seen as static.

ART: One thing thats interesting to me was when you

talked about taking the pictures and bringing them in
closer together so they could talk to one another. The
Parade is done the same way as the Masereel book, which
has only one picture on the right, and a blank on the left.
Theyre not talking, but rather, Shut up and look at this
picture. And now Shut up and look at this picture. Its
different from what you do with your paintings.

HILLARY: So why not make an animated film?

SI: I love movies. Its a great medium, probably the most
important art form of our age. But I got my hands full
already.

SI: Yes, but you have to realize had it been printed on

both sides, the darker images would have bled through the
paper.

HILLARY: How did you know her?

SI: Just from the gallery. Oh, I think I may have
known her son first. I had just finished The Parade, and

ART: Well, it depends on how . . . they could . . . but it

depends on how good the paper is. How thick.

New Yorker ad for exhibition of The Parade at the Lotte Jacobi

Gallery in New York City, September 26, 1953.

TO our Children