Antonio Frasconi (1919-2013) was a largely self-taught artist whose medium was mostly prints, in particular woodcuts. He grew up in Uruguay, and was apprenticed to a printer simply to learn a trade. He was soon drawing political cartoons which were published in newspapers. He came to the US at the end of WWII at the age of 26 with a scholarship to the Art Students League in NYC where he studied printmaking. After moving to California to be near his wife’s family, he worked as a gardener and security guard at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art where his skill was recognized, leading to a one man show at the museum. From then on, he was increasingly recognized as a talented artist, and was able to support himself with a mix of commercial art and art for its own sake. In addition to prints on their own, he did numerous illustrations and covers for books, including several children’s books.
Frasconi used his art to make important statements about how the world should be. He did a number of prints about such varied topics as the Disappeared (hundreds of Uruguayans who vanished from both Argentina and Uruguay during the dictatorship in the 70s), the use of the atomic bomb in Japan during WWII, and a series entitled Law and Order about murders in the US by various law enforcement agencies. The Law and Order series are united by an embossed gun sight superimposed on each of the prints.
Today’s print is entitled Law and Order: Kent, a portrayal of the 1970 shooting of 13 Kent State University students by the National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War. Interestingly, Frasconi also illustrated the cover of a collection of Herman Melville’s poems, titled after one of the poems, called “On the Slain Collegians”, about the deaths of many young men during the Civil War. This book was published in 1971. Resonance intended or not?
On the Slain Collegians, by Herman Melville
Youth is the time when hearts are large,
And stirring wars
Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn
To the blade it draws.
If woman incite, and duty show
(Though made the mask of Cain),
Or whether it be Truth’s sacred cause,
Who can aloof remain
That shares youth’s ardor, uncooled by the
snow
Of wisdom or sordid gain?
The liberal arts and nurture sweet
Which give his gentleness to man—
Train him to honor, lend him grace
Through bright examples meet—
That culture which makes never wan
With underminings deep, but holds
The surface still, its fitting place,
And so gives sunniness to the face
And bravery to the heart; what troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred—
Saturnians through life’s Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the
South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.
Woe for the homes of the North,
And woe for the seats of the South:
All who felt life’s spring in prime,
And were swept by the wind of their place and
time—
All lavish hearts, on whichever side,
Of birth urbane or courage high,
Armed them for the stirring wars—
Armed them—some to die.
Apollo-like in pride.
Each would slay his Python—caught
The maxims in his temple taught—
Aflame with sympathies whose blaze
Perforce enwrapped him—social laws,
Friendship and kin, and by-gone days—
Vows, kisses—every heart unmoors,
And launches into the seas of wars.
What could they else—North or South?
Each went forth with blessings given
By priests and mothers in the name of Heaven;
And honor in both was chief.
Warred one for Right, and one for Wrong?
So be it; but they both were young—
Each grape to his cluster clung,
All their elegies are sung.
The anguish of maternal hearts
Must search for balm divine;
But well the striplings bore their fated parts
(The heavens all parts assign)—
Never felt life’s care or cloy.
Each bloomed and died an unabated Boy;
Nor dreamed what death was—thought it mere
Sliding into some vernal sphere.
They knew the joy, but leaped the grief,
Like plants that flower ere comes the leaf—
Which storms lay low in kindly doom,
And kill them in their flush of bloom.