Antonio Frasconi on the Vietnam War

Thinking about what's happening in Venezuela right now and the role our government might take on this matter as I paged through prints by Frasconi made in response to the Vietnam War. This one is a selection from "On the Slain Collegians by Herman Melville". 

"It is important to remember that wars look good to many people in the beginning because something terrible has been done, and people feel that something must be done in retaliation. Only later does the thinking and questioning begin."   -Howard Zinn, from Artists In Time of War 

"Self-Portrait after Hieronymous Bosch" by Antonio Frasconi

We don't need to define our existence. We can simply listen to the scratching against the wind.

Antonio Frasconi's "The House That Jack Built"

About a week ago I stumbled a used copy for sale of The House that Jack Built: La Maison Que Jacques A Batie, which is a picture book in English and French by Antonio Frasconi. It was selling for just almost nothing so I had to buy it, and yesterday my treasure arrived in the mail. The cover is rather beat up, and it appears to be a well-loved library copy, but the pages are in good shape and I haven't been able to stop staring at it all day. (Funny aside: my two kids who are ages 3 and 5 could care less.)

Frasconi's book illustrations exhibit every quality of woodcuts I love: using the wood's resistance for more expressive mark-making, using the grain to add organic textures, and a general economy of marks. As a picture book with words on most pages, the compositions are unexpected. In almost every spread the woodcuts bleed partially off the page, but in different ways each time. Only black, white, and three colors (magenta, green, and yellow) are used, but they take turns filling the large swaths of background areas. The main text of the rhyme discretely rests in the negative spaces, but the typography for the onomatopoeia of the dog's "Grrrs" and the church bell's "Ding Dongs"  is arranged as part of the visual imagery.

Just as with all of Frasconi's woodcuts I've encountered, the work seems so completely inspired. He makes it look so easy, as if these visual arrangements simply flow through him onto the block, then to the page. Looking at this work makes me want to run off to some isolated retreat and just make woodcuts for months.

"California Trip" by Antonio Frasconi

Here's a composite of woodcuts by the late, great Antonio Frasconi, one of my absolutely favorite American printmakers. Few woodcut artists manage to develop a style as expressive and unique as Frasconi.

I hesitate to write about the images presented here. I feel the heart of Frasconi's work is so completely visual. With Frasconi's woodcuts, I am entralled with an image when it is in front of me, but after I am away from it for a while, I forget what it was which so enthralled me. I feel as if I must have been like a drunk person, and that the image wasn't really that captivating. Later I return to the image and am every bit as gratified as before! But how to write about that experience which is so utterly separate from words? That is partially why I've only featured Frasconi's work one other time.

Okay, so that's also a bit of a cop-out since the ruminations I pair with images on this blog are never an attempt to translate the image's meaning into words. They are simply literary responses; an exercise I employ to focus my attention on specific images which grab me, and explore my subjective response to them more intensely.

Speaking of experiences which engage the intellect and enliven the (metaphorical) soul, I dearly miss traveling. The United States is such a vast country with an overabundance of diverse and breathtaking scenery, and I have seen so little of it with my own eyes. Ah, but if I do not have the time or resources for that, at least I have art. Art, which cruises me down slithering rivers, escorts me through valleys and mountains under many-colored skies, where every sort of folk reside, and the horizon knows no bounds.

"Homage to George Jackson" by Antonio Frasconi

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. 

-Martin Luther King Jr.  

The woodcut master Antonio Frasconi died just about a year ago. (You can read his his NY Times obituary here.) He often made political images and was committed as an artist to social justice, as seen in this image he created of the Black Panther activist George Jackson.

I find it a difficult and haunting image to look at. A striking arrangement of textures punctuated by sharp shapes of black that sink into endless voids. Jackson's figure, helplessly bound on the ground, is a mountain of fabric, flesh, and metal, against stark and blindly white light. The bottom of a shoe, a bent knee, clenched fists, they all struggle against the chains that hold him down. He wears an expression of raw pain. No matter how much people are dehumanized by enemies, how much they are made to suffer, humanity can't be stripped away. All people... All people.

"The Storm is Coming" by Antonio Frasconi

It's early spring, been pouring rain all day with no sign of let up any time soon, so this image is most appropriate to write about today. This is a particularly captivating woodcut by Antonio Frasconi. The girl runs through the rain, away from the heaviest part of the storm, which hisses at her from the upper, left-hand corner. The swiftness of her movement is emphasized by the foreshortening of her back leg and two raised points in the back of her skirt. It is as if she emerges from another world where some invisible creature is trying to pull her back. Who is this girl (woman?) and where is she from? (I assume girl since she is smiling as she runs, though her face looks older.) Her outfit is clownish with her jagged-edged slip, mis-matched patterns, and clashing red top with pink skirt. She shields herself from the rain with a folded newspaper, and it is interesting it-of-itself, featuring a humongous bird and curious, giant lettering. The background gives no more clues to the environment, but the more I look at it, the more I get lost in the multitude of textures. Wild scratches depict rain, fluctuating intensity of the black ink, subtle woodgrain and waves of crosshatch that resembles burlap pressed against the atmosphere. I hear noises as I look at this image: tap tap, pitter pat, flap, flap. I smell mud. I feel a cool breeze and a chilling moisture in the air. I am almost out of breath, yet I grin. There is a terrible, wonderful something out there, and our flight from it is exhilarating.