GOODBYE FRANK FRAZETTA

When I was in the 5th or 6th grade I was introduced to Frank Frazetta’s paintings through the Ballantine softcover-edition art books from the 70s. Looking at the reproductions of his paintings brought about a feeling of unidentifiable euphoria. It’s a feeling one only experiences as a youth, learning more about the world’s offerings. And it’s a feeling that exists only as a memory because as we age we experience it less and less.

Frazetta’s renderings of flesh, fur, metal, fire, ether, stone, and marble seemed impossible to have been achieved with paint and yet the evidence was right before my eyes, and so effortlessly wrought it would seem. He was also a master of understanding light and its properties. It was not just Frazetta’s renderings of surface and technical prowess that spoke to me, but his super abilities to convey gesture, movement, drama, power, fear, passion, and lust. His paintings were windows to worlds we knew existed but couldn’t summon the strength of imagination to conjure what they looked like. Frazetta was able to and shared them with us. The worlds on display in his images were believable due in large part to his talent for illustrating gravity and the weight of his subjects: rippling-muscled, weathered warriors, and languidly lying voluptuous women with skin as soft as clouds and flawless as porcelain.

Frazetta grew up in Brooklyn and was nearly a professional baseball player. He hit the heights of illustration with his book cover paintings. It was said you could publish a blank book with a Frazetta cover and it would sell. Frazetta was also an accomplished comic book and comic strip artist before leaping from pen-and-ink to oils. Frazetta moved to the Pocono region in Pennsylvania later in his career. In the time before cheap flights to Florida were readily available, it was a popular vacation destination. A museum was established in East Stroudsburg, PA to house his paintings. Comic books, novels and statues were created based on characters within Frazetta’s paintings. Frazetta’s wife, Ellie, passed away last year. Recently there was conflict among Frazetta’s children when his son attempted to break-in and steal paintings from the Frazetta museum. But that conflict was resolved.

It’s hard to imagine the world at one time existed without the paintings and imagination of Frazetta. We are left today, a day after his death, with the remaining contributions of an American visionary whose talent will never be replicated. Looking across the landscape of American popular culture there are few titans who cast an all-encompassing shadow so large we aren’t aware we’ve always lived and created in it. I remember reading an essay in the front of one of Frazetta’s art books bemoaning the fact his paintings weren’t hung alongside the masters of painting in museums. The author vigorously defended Frazetta’s work against this perceived dismissal. But the temple that keeps his legacy and respects his genius is in the hearts of those who continue to be touched and inspired by his work and there is no safer haven. The emotional core of Frazetta’s drawings and paintings is like the earth and cosmos, part of an essence we all share, and has no need for shelter in the cold hallways of self-important buildings.

BENJAMIN MARRA