RACE &

ETHNICITY

ART SPIEGELMAN ON HIS “HASIDIC KISS” COVER:

“I set out to look for a drawing that would somehow shatter Eustace Tilley’s sangfroid and his monocle. Considering The New Yorker’s tradition of turning to seasonal and holiday themes for its covers, Valentine’s Day—a celebration of sentimentality with a vague hint of sex—seemed like a promising peg for an explosive picture.

“I thought about close-ups, faces of unlikely lovers kissing Tilley, and I aimlessly mixed symbols together like a mad chemist to see what might explode. When I doodled Tilley as a Hasidic Jew embracing a black woman I had one of those rare eureka moments. The smoldering resentments between New York’s black and Jewish communities had come to a boil in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn two years before, erupting into race riots and murder.

“As Valentine’s Day approached, the staff was heatedly debating the cover with Tina Brown, the editor. I felt as if I’d been strapped to a roller coaster: It was killed one day and resuscitated the next. On the afternoon the issue was set to go to press, I went to meet a half dozen or so editors, most opposed to my image. Some objected because the magazine could be seen as condescendingly peering down at benighted minorities. I argued that The New Yorker could no longer maintain its Olympian pose above the fray of the city’s life. Finally, there came an exasperated cry: ‘We’ve got to have a cover on press in the next five minutes.’ I must have been winning the argument at that moment, and the die was cast.”