Going against the grain.

• Author: Bach, Caleb
• Position: Printmaker Antonio Frasconi

Champion of the common man, enemy of elitism, printmaker, and teacher, Antonio Frasconi, outspoken and thoughtful, saves his most eloquent statements for his artwork--raw, courageous, unflinching statements about the troubling issues of our times. He makes us think about injustice, cruelty, perhaps most of all selfishness, that bedmate to apathy. Frasconi's message is not exclusively pessimistic, but more a wake-up call, a nudge to listen to that goodness he believes still dwells within us all. He has said his work "celebrates the joy of living," and in that sense its message contains a measure of optimism.

For over fifty years Frasconi has been a printmaker specializing in woodcuts. His very technique--woodblock, cutting tools, paper, ink--epitomizes an economy of means. Unlike many graphic artists, he avoids the cult of technology, in which complicated processes often eclipse the message. Frasconi sticks to basics and gets his point across with power, clarity, and efficiency. His final product is not imbued with false preciousness--endless data on edition numbers, artist's proofs, signatures, or special handmade papers. He expects to receive a reasonable return for his skill and hard work, but he never forgets that printmaking as a medium came into being as an inexpensive way to reach a mass audience. Although he does pull limited editions of single prints or images for folios and hand-bound editions, throughout his career the bulk of his output has found form in trade editions at reasonable prices. Beautiful, thoughtful books for average people is at the core of what Frasconi does.

During 1992-93 a rich and representative selection of a half-century of the artist's work toured the United States. Entitled The Books of Antonio Frasconi, the exhibition appeared at the Neuberger Museum of Art at the State Univerisity of New York (SUNY) in Purchase, the Art Museum of the University of Iowa, and the Smith College Art Museum in Northampton, Massachusetts. The show was remarkable for its breadth, as well as its sense of moral outrage--images of storm troopers, B-52s raining bombs upon Southeast Asian rice paddies, visual rosters of people who had disappeared at the hands of military governments. But equally moving were gentle, highly personal volumes aimed at young people: fables, bestiaries, nursery rhymes, even unique, uneditioned accordian books made for the artist's two sons. A substantial portion of the show was devoted to prints in celebration of writings this highly literate printmaker long has admired. Particularly notable were large prints from Frasconi's 1991 portfolio, The Enduring Struggle: Tom Joad's America, inspired by the protagonist's soliloquy in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Combining woodcuts with lithography, stark black and white images focused on nineteen labor and civil rights struggles in the United States--pivotal strikes, urban homelessness, demonstrations for racial equality, the women's movement.

That the show toured university campuses was appropriate; through much of his career Frasconi has served as devoted mentor to college students interested in printmaking. Since the early 1970s he has taught a course called "The Art of the Book" at SUNY, Purchase. Suspicious of the entire business of "teaching art," Frasconi plays down his role as professor. In the Harvard Art Review he once bluntly stated, "The artist as an art instructor. I don't believe it. The artist as an instructor is one with his work. And only his work. And nothing more. Now the artist as an 'entertainer'. . . that is what we have. And probably that is what people and colleges want. . . . I believe the average art student is overeducated and knows all the answers, but--I'm afraid--doesn't know the questions. The only desirable education is NO art education. Open your workshops to everybody! Have all material at your service and the opportunities to paint a wall, illustrate a book or poem, paint a canvas, to do so many things. Take art out of the cultural ghetto!" The artist's straight talk has been met with favor from university officials and students alike. "Frasconi enjoys the unqualified admiration of his colleagues," says George Parrino, dean of the Visual Art Department at SUNY, Purchase. "He is adored by his students."

Frasconi and his artist wife, Leona Pierce, live along the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. His long, narrow studio perches atop their residence, its back wall covered by...