I see this strange behaviour when both the containing cells and the graphics have a non-white background. I set the style of a notebook to "Standard Report" (Format -> Stylesheet) and did this:
Graphics[{Circle[], Text["Hello, world!"]}, Frame -> True, Background -> LightBlue]
I see this in each of the following versions: 9.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.3.1, 10.4.1 on OS X 10.11.5 and 10.3.1 and 10.4.1 on Windows 10.
Can others reproduce the problem?
Is there a simple fix for the frame ticks that doesn't require specifying tick labels explicitly?


FrameTicksStyle -> Background -> Nonefixes the frame ticks for me. – Simon Woods Jun 19 '16 at 18:59FrameTicksStyle -> {Background -> None}, which didn't work. – Szabolcs Jun 19 '16 at 19:04Directiveworks, but I found it strange to see options in aDirective(although I think I've seen it before...) – Szabolcs Jun 19 '16 at 19:22