Dox Thrash: an African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered.

by John Ittmann with essays by David R. Brigham, Cindy Medley-Buckner and Kymberly N. Pinder University of Washington Press January 2002 $50.00, ISBN 0-295-98159-8

In the final paragraphs of Modern Negro Art, artist-scholar James A. Porter ends his narrative of the achievements of early-20th century artists by focusing on Philadelphia-based printmaker Dox Thrash and the "achievement of this single contributor to the artistic printing processes in America." Citing Porter in his catalogue essay for Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered, curator John Ittmann goes on to tell us why Thrash was among the most innovative artists of his time.

A native of Griffin, Mississippi, Dox Thrash (1893-1965) left the South to pursue a career in art. He spent four years taking evening courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, finally enrolling full-time in 1920. In 1937, while experimenting with the printing process as part of the Fine Print Workshop of the Philadelphia Federal Art Project, Thrash discovered a new production method: the carborundum print. In the new method, the brand-name abrasive substance--Carborundum--is used to roughen the surface of the plate from which a mezzotint print is made. With help from suggestions made by fellow printmakers in the workshop, Thrash refined the process for which he is now known as its originator.

A recent exhibit of Thrash's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art featured his carborundum prints, his etchings, lithographs, aquatints and watercolors. Thrash's subjects range from street scenes to rural landscapes, from dignified portraits to erotic nudes. Despite working in a print medium that often created dark, indistinct images, there is nothing rote or mechanical in works such as Life, where a young girl thumbs through the picture magazine. In his etching Saturday Night, Thrash shows a woman curling her hair in preparation for an evening soiree. Thrash's knowing hand depicts the fatigued woman, perhaps a hairdresser, extending her last effort upon herself. Though the figure may be easily understood as a "type," Thrash's minimal but deft portrait suggests compassion and respect, not distance or indifference. As essayist Kymberly N. Pinder observes, the portraits, Head of a Young Man for example, combine a "racial idiom" with a patience and skill reminiscent of Augusta Savage's sculpture Gamin.

In bringing disparate collections together, the catalogue raisonne offers the most comprehensive assessment of Dox Thrash's work to date.

--Michelle Joan Wilkinson is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.