Dox Thrash (1893-1965) grew up in Georgia in the early 1900s with a childhood love for art that would lead him toward self-study of the practice through correspondence courses. His goal was to attend an art school that admitted Black students and the Great Migration led Thrash to Chicago where he studied at the Art Institute before being enlisted in the Army during WWI. He would later settle in Philadelphia where he built his artistic career as a draftsman, becoming a master printmaker and the first Black artist in the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia as part of the Works Progress Administration. Through his work with the workshop, he pioneered the carborundum printing process, a unique form of lithography which takes particles of carborundum that are applied to a plate to create tone. His carborundum mezzotints feature a broad range of mid-tones that are beautifully suited to highlight dark skin tones, shadow and light in emotionally evocative portraits and melancholic landscapes that harken back to Thrash’s formative years in Georgia.
While his mezzotints became his most notable and popular prints, he also worked in other mediums including watercolor, aquatint and traditional etching. I was drawn to a piece appropriately titled Saturday Night, and I loved how scholar Kymberly Pinder describes the woman in the work:
“As the title suggests, the young black woman in Saturday Night is pressing her hair with a heated comb in preparation for an evening out. The empty chair in front of her may have been recently vacated by her last customer or by a family member whose hair she had coifed in her kitchen. The long and arduous task of making coarse, tightly coiled hair straight to mimic current white hairstyles was often a communal event during which women gossiped and entertained. Those who were efficient and good at it could earn some extra income. Now, past midnight, this hairdresser has turned to herself, a bit weary but not too tired to hit the town.”
Here’s to Saturday night.
Culture Shock Art 
Thank you. Love “Saturday Night” by Dox Thrash. Haven’t seen this image in years.
Truly appreciate you giving him this coverage, and this particular artwork because of the way in which Thrash so exquisitely captured a lifetime of Black experiences for most Black women of his day. Today, the scene still plays out, and another version might be a woman getting her weave, whether straight hair or cornrow extensions, while another woman getting her own hair plaited or her natural twists tightened. From his portraits to his depictions of Black life, Trash has always been an artist of enormous talent nearly overlooked as abstract nonrepresentational art began to nearly dictate the larger art aesthetic and market. For Black Americans, whose history and images were rarely exhibited or even included in history books or positive images in contemporary media, artists like Trash and so many others should be our heroes as they were, and often still are, some of the best visual chroniclers of who, what, where, how and why we thrive, struggle, accomplish and just live life. Perhaps, like the long overdue Charles White touring exhibition, there will be more “revivalist” exhibitions presenting the work of the many Black artists of the past whose works should be held up along side the recognized white art masters who served as the chroniclers of their cultural experiences. Perhaps a moment to celebrate such artists in contemporary exhibits could be circling back now that artists creating culturally specific imagery are starting to get attention in the major white art market. We don’t need them to validate our artistic contributions, but I would be blind if I didn’t acknowledge the power of the purse cs equality or equity as a force that in this country too often is the true force for change and opportunity.
Thank you so much for providing such illuminating comments here. I too am very interested in revisiting the figurative work of artists who were left in the shadows of abstraction. Conversations between Western European portraiture and contemporary portraiture are gaining traction in museums, and I’m happy to see that, but I would also like to see more museums reach back to these overlooked artists. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.
The two Dox Thrash posts are really special and indeed “Sunday” should follow Saturday.
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