Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

12-2015

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Fine Arts

Degree Program

Art (Creative) and Art History with a concentration in Critical and Curatorial Studies, MA

Committee Chair

Morrin, Peter

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Begley, John

Committee Member

Begley, John

Committee Member

Theriot, Nancy

Author's Keywords

Sally Hazelet Drummond; abstract expressionism; curatorial practice; feminism; historical revisionism

Abstract

Sally Hazelet Drummond is an iconoclastic artist situated within the revolutionary movement of Abstract Expressionism. Drummond is the first female to graduate from the Hite Art Institute, earning a master’s in painting in 1952. During her study at the University of Louisville she explored Abstract Expressionism. In 1953 Drummond joined the Tanager Gallery, one of the Tenth Street artists’ co-ops. In the midst of Willem De Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, Drummond refined her work into a simplified, contemplative style that she continued to develop over the course of her life. Drummond described Abstract Expressionism as a kind of iconoclastic fervor. While history has remembered the style as being characterized largely by wall sized canvases swabbed with gestural marks of the artists or huge fields of color, re-assessment today allows for a much larger perspective that encompasses the avant-gardism of the movement. Drummond continued the iconoclasm of the early abstract expressionists by rejecting these methods of working, creating her own definitive iteration.

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