Art Spiegeleman (ed), Si Lewen's Parade: An Artist's Odyssey, Abrams Comicarts, New York, 2016

the accordion's slipcase

This is an impressive publication about a passionate artist and it serves as a testimonial and act of recovery for someone who turned away from the artworld. Born into a Jewish family in Lubin, Poland, Lewen (1918-2016) grew up in Germany, and then he and his family fled to the United States when he was sixteen. Returning to Europe in World World II as part of an elite intelligence unit of native German speakers (The Richie Boys), he was one of the first witnesses to the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Thoroughly shaken by the horrors of the camp he broke down and fled, later writing in an unpublished memoir:

"I checked into the nearest medical station: I was urinating and vomiting blood worse than ever, and my insides were one wrenching mess. I knew that I was finished as a solider, seeing the world for what, I thought, it was: a slaughterhouse, a bordello, and an insane asylum, run by butchers, pimps, and madmen. And Man? A festering, putrid, slimy excretion polluting the face of the Earth. A hospital ship brought me back to America, and half a year later I was discharged— "as good as new," one of the doctors said. I was not sure."

One side of this accordion features 63 reproductions of the drawings from his powerful pictorial narrative "The Parade," which was begun in 1950 and reflects in a gritty manner the "...recurring drumbeat of war that lures every generation into devastation." [Spiegelman]. The other side of the accordion is devoted to Lewen's journey as an artist and includes a long essay by Spiegelman introducing this irrepressible artist, accompanied with images of his works from the various stages of his career. Altogether this is a dense publication that goes a long way in explaining what motivated this complex artist and his responses to the world around him —always flavored by his experiences during the war and man's inhumanity to man.

Of this book's accordion format Spiegelman notes in the introduction that "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 that they could have a conversation."

For further information about Si Lewen check out this comprehensive website: SI LEWEN | Art Gallery | The Ritchie Boys | The Parade

Seventy-three double-sided pages, individually 7.75" x 11" and when unfolded 67ft 10inches.

slipcase with accordion

this side contains the drawings for "The Parade"

the side of the accordion that surveys Lewen's life and work

opening page to Spiegelman's essay with photo of Lewen

back cover of slipcase

Bartley Reid Johnson, Apocalypso (2000), Memories of the End of the World (2004), Sailing into Oblivion (2004), Aardbart and Son Press

Apocalypso, screenprint, 2000, ed. 100

12 single-sided pages, individual pages 5" x 5", unfolded 6ft

The autobiographical statement below was published under the title "Who is Bart" and it can be found on Johnson's website, where he also sells his works in a variety of media including books, ceramics, T-shirts and Giclée prints. Another site devoted to his work features his paintings and drawings. See them at: [Bart JohnsonArt] and [About Bart | Bartwerke]

"Bart Johnson was born in Washington, DC in 1954 with high-functioning autism that was undiagnosed for fifty years. He began having visions of the Apocalypse in grade school, along with the terrifying belief that the people he was surrounded by were robots. A contributing factor to his delusional state was going out into the hallway of his Catholic grade school surrounded by the deafening  scream of air raid sirens to huddle with his 5 year old classmates and to  protect their neck vertebrae from being crushed should the ceiling collapse on them from the shockwave blast of a nuclear bomb. The King and Kennedy brother assassinations which began when he was 9 years old followed by LSD and the Vietnam War did little to dispel his initial suspicions he was living in Apocalyptic times surrounded by robots. And now, his initial apprehensions have materialized with the latest technological “advances” like Artificial Intelligence and Neuralink. He currently lives in peaceful rural seclusion with only the occasional mass shooting in a nearby town to disrupt the orderly tranquility." 

Johnson studied painting and received his BFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University, and then went on to earn an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For the next 18 years he lived in New York, after which he spent a number of years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently he resides in Pennsylvania.

Inspired by the old masters and contemptuous of the contemporary artworld of which he says "I feel little to no connection to most current contemporary art...The only work I find real inspiration in is that which was made prior to the 1960s (the 60s being) when the commercialism connected to Pop replaced seriousness—by which I mean the spiritual purpose—of earlier American painters such as the Abstract Expressionists."

Johnson states that his preoccupation with the figure and his "...pictorial language (are) derived from an intense study of life...Observation is essential to me, just as it was to painters as diverse as Bruegel, Rembrandt and Watteau." As such Johnson does little work in his studio but spends as much time as possible in public settings such as coffee shops where he can draw & write and generally immerse himself in the flux of daily life. 

The 1960s were a defining period for Johnson and in the following quote he addresses how this era influenced his art, "I was in Richmond during the Vietnam war, surrounded by anarchy, radical politics, and hallucinogenic drug use. I think a lot of what I'm doing now, my sensitivity to current calamity, is affected by that formative period." Critical of the current times in the USA he views America to be in "...the death throes of a materialistic culture." But despite his apocalyptic view of the country he has positive words for the activity of art making stating "Making art is a way of trying to regain childhood. We all lose it, judge it, and learn ourselves out of it. Then, we try to un-learn and journey back to that place. Art is a magical practice; it's a deep belief in man's spiritual nature, despite his long fall from grace."

For me its been fascinating to encounter an artist, an 'outsider' and an 'insider' simultaneously, who has utilized the unique qualities of the accordion format to create these wonderfully wild, crazy, humorous and desperate post-apocalyptic friezes.

A key influence in writing this text, as well as all the source for all the accompanying quotes, can be found in Kristin Carlson's excellent article titled "Studio Visit with Bart Johnson" (2012) located on the website of the Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, that represents Johnson's work. Studio Visit with Bart Johnson | MINDY SOLOMON GALLERY

Note: to increase the size of the images click on them

accordion with wraparound cover

back cover

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Memories of the End of the World, 2004, ed. 1000

6 pages double-sided, individual pages 8.5" x 8", unfolded 4ft

accordion with wraparound cover

reverse side

back cover

________________________________________________________________

Sailing Into Oblivion, 2004

18 single-sided pages, individual pages 4" x 5.5", unfolded 7ft 4"

The image on the cover is a play on Théodore Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa" (1818-1819) – originally titled "Scène de Naufrage" (Shipwreck Scene) – which is an oil painting by this French Romantic artist and and lithographer.

accordion with wraparound cover

back cover

Julie Doucet, Suicide Total, L'Association, Paris, France, 2022

I was really excited to get a copy of this wonderful leporello by Doucet which consists of a 60ft long hand-drawn autobiographical narrative. I'm going to let the publisher's statement serve as the introduction to this great book:

"Julie Doucet had promised to stop writing comics and autobiography. Here she returns to her words with a fabulous immersive fresco. The year is 1989, Julie is 23 years old, she creates fanzines which she distributes to bookstores or by mail order. She then begins an intense epistolary relationship with one of her readers, a Frenchman who is doing his military service and whom she nicknames "the hussar". The two young people write hundreds of letters to each other and become enthusiastic about each other, until a trip to Europe offers them the opportunity to meet in the flesh...

Total Suicide reads and unfolds like an uninterrupted flow. No boxes, but pages saturated in an interweaving of known faces (Julie's in particular) and unknown faces, birds, animals, various objects - all drawn in ink - and which carries us away like a river to go back in time. The machine is a little rusty at the beginning and the author urges herself to draw, mentions her difficulty in handling words, before plunging - and us with her - into the flow of her memories to resurrect the intensity of the past feelings.

No more boards and boxes, Total Suicide was drawn in one piece. In order to best render this graphic performance, the book is presented in the form of a leporello which takes place over nearly 20 meters."

At the beginning of the book Doucet gives some rather interesting instructions for the reader, writing "the pages of this book having been drawn from the bottom to top, it is recommended to adapt the reading in this direction."

 

144 single-sided pages, individually 8" x 5" and when unfolded 60ft.

In the late 80s I was doing a project using a pseudonym (Janet Janet) and she published a zine called Schism. Doucet and Janet had an intense correspondence for a while in which we traded our zines and naturally I'm flattered that Janet Janet's name should surface in Doucet's reminiscenses from this period.

                                                                      back cover