through John Ittmann with essays by way of David R.

through John Ittmann with essays by way of David R. Brigham, Cindy Medley-Buckner and Kymberly N Pinder University of Washington Pres January 2002 $5000 ISBN 0-295-98159-8

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

A native of Griffin, Mississippi, Dox Thrash (1893-1965) left the southern to pursue a career in art. He exhausted four years taking evening courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, finally enrolling full-time in 1920 In 1937 while experimenting with the printing proces as part of the Fine Print Workshop of the Philadelphia Federal Art throw out Thrash discovered a new production method: the carborundum print. In the modern 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 through fellow printmakers in the workshop, Thrash refined the proces for which he is now known as its originator.

A fresh exhibit of Thrash's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art featured his carborundum prints, his etchings, lithographs, aquatints and watercolors. Thrash's make liables range from street scenes to rural landscapes, from dignified portraits to erotic denudeds Despite working in a print medium that oftentimes created dark, indistinct images, there is nothing rut or mechanical in works in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as Life, where a young girl thumb in consequence of the picture magazine. In his etching Saturday Night, Thrash exhibits 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 concerning herself. Though the figure may be easily understood as a "type" Thrash's minimal nevertheless deft portrait suggests compassion and relate to not distance or indifference. As essayist Kymberly N Pinder detects the portraits, Head of a Young Man for example, combine a "racial idiom" with a patience and skill reminiscent of Augusta Savage's cut Gamin.

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

--Michelle Joan Wilkinson is a postdoctoral compeer at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC

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