JACK FRANKFURTER

FRANKFURTER--Jack. Jack Frankfurter. by Marcellus Miglioranzi. Time is time for its precision and concurrent elasticity. The mark of our existence comes from the former and the extent of that existence comes wrapped in the latter. I write for someone beyond the grave, beyond an urn full of ashes. This is the life of one Jack Frankfurter, whose art touched all four corners of this globe, and yet his departure went unnoticed, uncelebrated, but for a small circle of friends. The spark that was the painter's presence, through the engraving marks left by his paint brush, went cold on July 26 of this past year. Time caught up to him: it blew the cooling air of mortality on the 93-year-old vessel that carried the spark. Gone are now the days of Passovers and Rosh Hashanahs in his parents' uptown Manhattan home, telling tales of his voyages across the globe to friends who never even left the neighborhood. No more recounts of painting the Colosseum from the inside, with no fences or doors to block the passage of his easel under a red moonlit night. Silenced went the wheels of his Ford Model A that were still running in his brain from the time he took the South American challenge unsuccessfully. No longer will he send a mundane reminder of humanity to his devoted "groupies" in the form of a simple digital photo from his wraparound terrace fully decorated with flowers-a-million at Piazza Navona, always denoting the dissatisfaction with the "malfunctioning" of his desktop and the noisy gelato shop downstairs on Via del Governo Vecchio. He had nothing short of an enviable resume: Columbia, Cooper Union, Accademia di Francia Firenze, too many to list. The fate of magazine covers featuring his art and accomplishments now moved to the back of the archives, the search becoming more obscure as his biography stands incomplete upon his departure. The artistic articles, the international prizes, the Tiffany designs, the off- Broadway stage decors, the force of his unique style, now buried in a data mausoleum in ether for those who were not singed by his artistic inspiration through the acquisition a physical mark of that burn. His collectors' list is eclectic: famous names, established icons, simple folks. In the heights of mid-town Manhattan, a string of his paintings decorates the Frankfurter floor of the Chrysler Building. The shadow of a Westinghouse in the long-gone 1960s, purchasing a panel before even it was brought into the gallery that was about to host a show, contrasts with the desire of Fellini to have a piece by this "unique" Austrian artist. Austrian born, quintessential- ly New Yorker, irrevocably Roman, he wore his love for all three like he mixed influences in his art: seamless, fluidity-full, Frankfurtian-like. Like so many of his generation, Jack was a conglomerate of cultures, traded in the world market of art and erudition which he decorated so adorably in his multi-lan- guage expressionism. Periods delineated his artistic development, phases distinct but always welded by his inimitable composition and brushstrokes. I re-watch his mastery over a twenty-year span in a flash of memory, still awestruck by the beauty and distinctiveness of his construction and colors. I re-watch the moments of clairvoyant political discussion over a cold glass of freshly squeezed lemonade, and I see his body age, until the day he held my hand at Santo Spirito Hospital and gave me errands to run for him, perhaps sensing the impending end. Friends of a lifetime will keep the spark fluttering in their midst, as long as theirs also flutters. His main collection will reflect his light permanently (as far as permanent in this world is possible) in Springfield, MA. The life of this outstanding painter - for the time being - will remain veiled, as life itself denied him a few more moments to procure secure etching of words that emanated his experience on earth. Friends will grief softly the loss of a wonder full wunderbarer Freund, enraged all the while by the vulture-like manner with which some of the people close to him dematerialized his existence, but relieved that his existence in this earth remains imprinted in his surviving opera. Time forced him to transition into a different form and disperse around the Universe. The rush of a long human existence transformed into dust by celestial capriccio. As for my everlasting moment, from the almost-centenary body of the gentleman, I received a composed goodbye, formed under the influence of an ever-changing world, but always constant in his expectations of continuity: "Very well then, child, always a pleasure and till we meet again." And I leave him, yearning for just one more conversation.