Revising Art History: Curator Katherine Page Reclaims Sally Michel’s Overlooked Legacy in the artist’s first museum exhibition in decades and her first retrospective in Florida at the Mennello Museum
by Maria Guerrero, founder of Women in the Arts, Inc.
Katherine Page, Curator of Art and Education, Mennello Museum of American Art. The exhibition: Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism is on view at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida until January 12, 2025.
Maria Guerrero: This exhibition is unprecedented and historic for Orlando. A premiere, presenting an innovative retrospective of Sally Michel’s work. Why is it so significant?
Katherine Page: Nationally, Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism is the first exhibition considering Sally Michel’s work in over 23 years and it is the first time – ever – in Florida that her work is being highlighted as a solo exhibition. Sally Michel is an artist who has long been overlooked for her own contributions to the history of art in the United States as she put aside her painting career and instead worked as provider for her family, taking care of her daughter while enabling her husband, Milton Avery, to paint full time and championing his artwork in the minds of gallerists, curators, and collectors. The passion and innovation displayed in her painting practice occurred in tandem with her husband and continued to evolve long after his passing manifesting in her own extraordinary style within their shared methods of figural abstraction and use of large fields of pure color.
Michel’s husband was deeply admired for his style and was hailed as THE artist who bridged the gap between the European Avant Garde and the American Abstract Expressionists by one of the most prominent New York art critics of the 1950s, Clement Greenberg, whose acclaim secured an artist’s space in our current lessons of Art History. Michel, however, went largely unacknowledged until a curator in the late 1980s asked to see her work while researching Avery, leading to Michel’s first solo exhibition. Now, Michel is being reconsidered and her work is becoming increasingly more valued in expansive conversations considering a wider view of Modern Art in the United States.
Painting: Sally Michel, Untitled (Sally & Milton), 1965, oil on canvasboard. The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.
MG: How did the idea for this exhibition come about? What inspired its development, and who were the key contributors?
KP: Mennello Museum co-founder, Michael Mennello saw the talent and virtuosity inherent in Sally Michel’s artworks and began to collect her paintings focusing on work she had done inspired by her time in Central Florida during the 1950s – landscapes featuring magnificent palm trees and beaches. Mennello purchased these first pieces through D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc, New York, the gallery representatives of the artist’s estate. Then, the Mennello Museum was able to purchase one of Michel’s later, large-scale paintings Bill and Friends (1988, oil on canvas) with funds from the Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art in 2018 strengthening our own collection of modern, women artists and enabling us to tell the story of Modern American Art by including Michel in collections exhibitions alongside her known peers as well as other overlooked artists like Jo Hopper.
Having that curatorial interest, relationship with D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc, and access to Michael Mennello’s personal collection gave us the chance to connect with other passionate, private collectors who would be willing to lend pieces for an exhibition as well as large institutions like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts who have included Michel’s paintings in their collection.
The gallery further connected me with the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, run by the late artists’ daughter March Avery and grandson Sean Cavanaugh – both successful artists as well. I was able to work with Cavanaugh to explore and research in Michel’s archives to locate additional paintings that would tell the full story of Michel’s career and her varied interests as an artist. We began with her works inspired by Florida and those that reflected her later life in upstate New York surrounded by friends and family and expanded those themes to include her travel and the influence of her art historical predecessors. I felt that it was also important to include the illustrations that Michel produced to support her family, her works on paper completed during her vacations and before she had the time for canvases, as well as her personal sketchbooks logging ideas, colors, shapes, and patterns for those final paintings.
MG: The term "Abstracting Tonalism" is intriguing. Can you explain what it means and how it relates to the Avery Style?
KP: The title of the exhibition, Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism, was inspired by Michelʼs interest in Art History where I found in her artwork, a meeting of figural abstraction and the poetic sentiment of the Tonalists.
Modern Art contains many stylistic movements beginning with European Realism and Tonalism leading into Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism. The movements were defined by artistic concern in a variety of aesthetic interests on how the effect of shape, color, and form yielded a fresh experience with art for the viewer, resulting in new and, at the time, shocking, non-naturalistic depictions. During the late 19th–early 20th century, the Tonalist movement was a loose association of artists who were interested in portraying how a landscape felt in one’s spirit to depict a reality beyond appearances. Their scenes were often studio-completed canvases that portrayed hazy, dark, and poetic views of barren landscapes and their changing seasons, blue-gray nights, and the countryside—oftentimes all subjects combined.
Emotive and evocative landscape subjects are found throughout Michelʼs oeuvre and reflect her interest in capturing the feeling of a moment. The Avery Style is a term used to describe Sally, Milton, and March Avery’s painting style – how they incorporate simplified shapes of abstracted, yet recognizable imagery constructed though interconnected fields of bold, emotive color to form genre scenes like landscapes, still lifes, or portraits. In her most mature work, Michel chose pastel, low-key colors distilling her subjects into simplified shapes of color. From her interviews and through her artwork I saw Michel’s process as mingling of earlier Tonal stylistic methods with the aesthetic philosophies of her own time, reducing the recognizable and figurative detail of her subject matter by focusing more on the mood of the scene so that it could be felt and experienced on a personal level by the viewer.
MG: Sally Michel’s art and life were deeply influenced by her surroundings. How did her time in Florida and her relationship with Milton Avery shape both their work and her visibility as an artist?
KP: Sally Michel was incredibly inspired by her time in Florida. Florida and the 1950s seem to have been a period of change for Michel’s practice. She begins the decade using vibrant colors and a thicker application of paint but experiments with a reduction in materials and softer pastel colorings in her beach scenes. We were able to locate many paintings evoking the feeling of midcentury Florida, from the sea foam green and pink motels to the state’s then untamed landscapes, flora, fauna, and the friendships Michel found worthy of preserving on canvas. While she and Milton Avery were residents at the Research Studio for Painters and Writers (now Art and History Museums Maitland), Michel tested her talents with monoprinting. We were able to locate two impressions of a shadowy palm tree and surrounding flowers demonstrating an early example of Michel making the most out of a reduced application of material to relay texture.
Sally Michel, Untitled (Monotype #1 and #2). 1951, Monotype on paper. 16 7/8 x 13 7/8 inches. The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.
MG: During her visit to the Mennello Museum, renowned New York-based art critic and writer Eleanor Heartney joined artist Sean Cavanaugh, Sally Michel’s grandson, for a panel discussion. What were some of the key highlights from their conversation?
KP: As the exhibition features many paintings and works on paper that depict her family, it was incredible to have Cavanaugh speak about his time with his grandmother– learning from her, her incredible artistic work ethic sketching and painting each morning, and the friendships she made throughout her lifetime. Heartney spoke to the larger cultural zeitgeist that informed Michel’s career – a woman who continued to paint at a time when her contemporaries were only interested in promoting men’s work like that of her husband, Avery. While Michel went largely unrecognized for her accomplishments, she maintained her practice and continued to grow as an artist throughout her lifetime.
MG: In the exhibition catalog, Eleanor Heartney discusses the “artist/wife” problem. How does her perspective shed light on the challenges faced by women artists like Sally Michel, and how does it help us rethink and revise their contributions to art history?
KP: In her essay, Sally Michel and The Artist/Wife Problem, Heartney reflects on Sally Michel’s lack of reception within the traditional cannons of Art History and Art Criticism we had been taught in school–like many women artists of the same time period who were overlooked because of their gender identity but who are now being reconsidered in exhibitions such as these. She brings to mind Lee Krasner, Dorothea Tanning, and Leonora Carrington to name a few women who we have seen in large retrospective reconsiderations of recently. Heartney concludes the essay by asking the reader, “Now that we know about Sally Michel’s art, can we avoid acknowledging it in its own right?”
Sally Michel, Rockabye Kitty, 1983. Oil on canvas. 50 x 36 inches. Loan courtesy of Joseph T. and Ashby V. Waldo.
MG: For visitors coming to this exhibition, what should they pay special attention to? Are there particular works or themes from the catalog you’d highlight as a must-see?
KP: I would recommend visitors pay attention to the choices Michel made when abstracting something familiar down to its most inherent parts, look closely at the shapes made and how areas of color connect, consider her uninhabited color choices and patterning as well. The watercolor study and final painting for Rushing Brook (1988) provide a wonderful example to compare Michel’s original ideas with later artistic choices to reduce subject matter and alter color.
If you’re looking to be inspired, take a long look at Michel’s sketches and sketchbooks – they’re a wonderful reminder that the artist’s mind and hand are always working to consider what might make a good picture.
Michel wanted her paintings to be understood by all and worked diligently to create an atmosphere within that could connect with the viewer’s memory and emotion of a certain time and place. I might be biased and feel as though all the works are must-sees, which might make my tours a little long, but if you had only a brief time to experience the work, chose one that resonates with you, your history, consider the subject matter, textures, shapes, colors, and atmosphere depicted.
Right now, the celestial paintings like Moon and Drifting Clouds (1989) really resound with a deep feeling and connection for having time to myself quietly and peacefully observe the nighttime environment. Thoughtful (1991) is also a work that has stayed in my mind, for the delicate forms and vibrancy of color choices – especially in the sitter’s lustrous hair.
Sally Michel, Moon & Drifting Clouds, 1989. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 in. The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.
MG: In researching for this project, were there any quotes or ideas from Sally Michel that feel especially relevant today? How do her words resonate with modern audiences?
Yes, there were many quotes I highlighted from interviews with Sally Michel that I feel would resonate with audiences and artists today. This was an interesting exercise as the interviews were focused on Michel’s relationships with her famous peers, husband Milton Avery and friend Mark Rothko. Yet, Michel’s passion and agency as an artist shone through and her interests were able to come to the fore as well. I mentioned earlier her interest in creating paintings that could be appreciate by all. Michel stated: “I think great painting is universal and it can be understood by anybody.” I found her point of view inspiring for artists as well, she has said: “Well I find it’s fun [painting]. I really feel sorry for people that can’t paint because it’s so much fun to paint and it makes everyday feel like an adventure.” And while she had a wonderful group of friends who got together to discuss their work at the end of the day, Michel stated:
“I really think painting has to grow out of painting and not out of talk about painting. At least for me, I get most of my ideas about painting from the painting I’m doing. While I’m doing it, it gives me the ideas.”
Images by Laura Serdiuk and Women in the Arts, Inc.
Published December 13, 2024