Dorothy Fratt: Color Mirage

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
February 3 - July 21, 2024

Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and co-curated by Jennifer McCabe, director and chief curator, and Lauren R. O’Connell, curator of contemporary art.
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Generous support provided by Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation, The Virginia M. Ullman Foundation, Yares Art, Nancy and Robert Kravetz Philanthropic Fund, Joan Prior and John Armstrong, and Christy and Charlie Jerz. 

​Color Mirage is the most comprehensive retrospective of Dorothy Fratt (1923­–2017), featuring more than five decades of the artist’s prolific body of work. Often aligned with Abstract Expressionism’s color field painting and the Washington Color School’s hard-edge painting, Fratt’s distinct abstract style solidified after moving to Arizona in 1958, suggesting a unique amalgamation of creative expression influenced by place and time. Although the artist had strong ties to her hometown of Washington, DC, Fratt expressed that Arizona was the only place where she could produce paintings, specifically because it was away from the mainstream influences of her contemporaries. The combination of access to the East Coast art scene and freedom from its sway produced an artist whose abstraction possessed an idiosyncratic alchemy of color, form, and philosophy based on life in the American Southwest. 
Fratt was a significant figure in the Phoenix art community yet was underrecognized by the greater art world due to working outside the major city centers of the mid-20th century. This exhibition contributes to an ongoing revision of the art historical canon and explores the vibrant legacy of a great American painter.

Landscape
The rise of Modern art brought on an ideological shift for landscape painting by demoting the purely visual  in favor of emphasizing the psychological experience of place. The Arizona landscape gave Fratt a sense of freedom to experiment with her abstract style, which countered cowboy art that romanticized the West’s natural setting and sunsets. Fratt painted the landscape as she experienced it, not as others imagined. Fratt said Arizona’s “incredible light inspired [her] to get really serious about color,” which is evident in her singular approach. Jean Lipman, longtime editor of Art in America and expert on American art, recognized that Fratt was an artist working against the popular forms of Western art and considered her a significant abstract painter of the Western landscape. Lipman put forward that Fratt was painting the light, color, air, and shapes that had unique qualities in the Southwest.

Dialogues
Fratt experimented with conjoined canvas paintings that she called “dialogues” or “counter dialogues” to form relationships between each part of a whole painting. Using two or three canvases of different sizes to test the boundaries of the overall shape, Fratt no longer saw separate frames to work in but an expanded space in which she created meaning through color and form. In single canvas works, Fratt explored her dialogues by dividing the canvas into two colors, typically different shades of the same hue, as seen in The Night Between (1980). Fratt’s dialogue paintings are visual conversations that create dynamic viewing experiences as one’s eyes bounce back and forth across the canvas.

Peripheral Vision
Intent on decentralizing the focal point of a painting, Fratt placed shapes and lines at the perimeter of her compositions to create an effect that she called the “peripheral edge” or “peripheral vision.” The artist positioned abstract forms near, adjoined, or overlapping the edge of the canvas after realizing that this optical technique broke down the spatial hierarchy of three-dimensional space to reveal inner space. Emphasizing the importance of peripheral vision was one of the many ways Fratt stayed true to her progressive and subversive frame of mind that pushed out from the center toward the margins in search of a greater meaning. To consider the edge of a painting, as she so often did, or the fringe of a movement is to consider a more complete and inclusive view.

Color Fluency
A true colorist, Fratt combined pigment with an acrylic base to form a wide palette of varying reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, violets, and blacks. Using pigments, including cadmium red, ultramarine blue, thalo green, hansa yellow-orange, and yellow ochre, the artist always mixed and remixed to find the exact hue she envisioned. Fratt expressed that the phenomenal light in the desert inspired her various color combinations that seem to represent an attitude over reality. John Armstrong, who organized Fratt’s 1980 exhibition at Scottsdale Center for the Arts and collaborated with her on several serigraphs in the 1980s and 1990s, recalls that halfway through the run of Great Day (1981), the orange ink for the band across the top ran out. He was concerned about color matching, but Fratt calmly began to mix a new batch and shortly returned with more ink of the exact same orange that only a true colorist could achieve.

Floating Phantoms
Through abstraction, Fratt was free to experiment with the representation of reality by diminishing a painting’s focal point to achieve atmospheric levity of place and self. The artist referred to many of her works as “floating paintings,”underscoring her interest in suspending gravity. In Conjecture (1987) and Dilemma (1988), Fratt signed the paintings on all edges, allowing for variable viewing orientations. In several paintings, such as Red Ahead (1983), Fratt amplified the base color with forms in similar hues to create “phantoms.” Aiming to register the optic effects of the atmosphere on a painting, the artist worked with red on red, blue on blue, yellow on yellow, and black on black, to name a few, but in almost indistinguishable shades. One’s perception of Fratt’s phantom paintings shifts depending on the light, distance, and angle in which it is viewed, sometimes only registering the forms on the periphery.

Symbolic Gestures
Fratt intentionally chose open-ended titles to allow for individual interpretation, yet they offer insight into the artist’s life experiences and interests. The pleasure of movement and interaction with others is conveyed through Fratt’s use of color and formal gestures, as well as her titles that refer to games, dance, and music, such as 6 Sticks (1989) and Crescendo (1993). Select titles acted as homages to artists whose works and styles inspired her, including El Circo (1988) after Alexander Calder’s Cirque Calder [Calder’s Circus]. Fratt was interested in the Japanese aesthetic of Shibui and the Buddhist philosophy of Zen, which she explored in paintings like Red Mantra (1986) and Shi Bui (1983). While many titles refer to identifiable things, several of them are symbolic of temporal moments or internal thoughts, such as a statement of surprise in Oh My (2000) or a difficult situation in Dilemma (1988). In total, Fratt’s titles act as symbolic gestures that guideviewers toward a multiplicity of perspectives.

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CHRONOLOGY
Early Years
Dorothy Fratt was born to Hugh and Martha Miller of Washington, DC, on August 10, 1923. Her father was an accomplished photographer-journalist who was known for being the foremost American turf photographer in the 1920s, being a founding member of the White House News Photographers Association in 1921, teaching the young Jacqueline Bouvier how to use a camera, and his position as chief photographer at The Washington Post. Fratt's parents encouraged her interest in art from an early age and enrolled her in art classes starting at the age of 9. Between the ages of 10 and 14, she created a manuscript titled Lines That Live, in which she used words and images to illustrate how lines express attitude. Her first success as an artist came in 1938, when she won first prize at the Corcoran Gallery student show with her work Red Shoe, which led to a summer mentorship with American Cubist painter Karl Knaths. Fratt studied with Russian American figurative painter Nicolai Cikovsky at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in 1940 before attending Mount Vernon Seminary and College on scholarship from 1940 to 1942, where art historian Agnes DeLano encouraged her to fullypursue painting. From 1942 to 1943, she attended The Phillips Memorial Gallery Art School on scholarship, again studying painting with Knaths. Fratt taught Renaissance art history at Mount Vernon College from 1946 to 1951. 

1960s
In 1958, Fratt moved to Phoenix and was immediately drawn to the desert’s open landscape in contrast to the dense urban atmosphere of her Washington, DC, upbringing. This unique environment became pivotal in the formation of the artist’s distinctive approach to abstraction. Fratt’s paintings were included in several local and national shows during the 1960s. However, her non-objective style was wildly different from the popular Western cowboy art of the Arizona art scene, making it difficult for local audiences and critics to fully appreciate her work. Fratt taught private painting and color theory lessons to support her family and received commercial commissions from local businesses, including the Phoenix Symphony, Uptown Plaza, and the Kiva Center. Despite the lack of appreciation for abstraction and the need for additional jobs, Fratt continued producing new work, leading to her 1965 solo exhibition at the newly opened Clare Yares Gallery in Scottsdale. The mid-1960s marked a significant shift in Fratt’s paintings as she transitioned from oil to acrylic, a newly popular paint among artists, and began making her multi-canvas paintings, establishing her signature style.

1970s
The 1970s brought Fratt more time to focus on her artwork after marrying Curtis Calivin Cooper Jr. (1914–2008), known by friends as Bud. Cooper was an aspiring artist and a banker who oversaw his family’s cattle ranch, Cooper Mountain Ranch in Williams, Arizona. Fratt would work from the ranch during the summer months and return to their home on Camelback Mountain during the cooler months. The Camelback Mountain residence had expansive windows that looked out over the city and surrounding desert landscape with ample space for Fratt to have a formal artist studio. In 1973, the Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission solicited numerous art supporters to help purchase a painting by Fratt for their collection, which would later transition to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Collection. The commission members succeeded in 1983 with the purchase of Red Mesa (1977), although they previously acquired the print Jacob’s Ladder Festival VIII by commissioning the artist through their annual arts festival in 1976. During this decade, the artist set aside teaching and commissions to focus on expanding her artistic expression, resulting in three decades of prolific output.

1980s
In 1980, Scottdale Center for the Arts presented Dorothy Fratt: 1970–1980, surveying a decade's worth of Fratt’s work. Organized by an artist friend and visual arts manager at the Center, John Armstrong, the exhibition featured thirty-six paintings, including several currently on view. In the exhibition catalog, Armstrong noted that Fratt exemplified the characteristics he held most high in evaluating artists: she had developed an individual style, maintained the highest level of integrity without fear of addressing popular topics, and supported fellow contemporary artists. In his opinion, all these factors added to the appreciation and growth of the Arizona art scene. The catalog included essays by Jean Lipman, former editor of Art in America, and Rudolf Baranik, an artist and writer who was associated with the mid-century New York art scene. Baranik’s essay positioned Fratt as an astute observer and exceedingly talented artist, who was a true colorist in relation to other well-known artists, such as Ellsworth Kelly, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis.

1990s
The early 1990s proved an extremely productive time for Fratt as she continued to evolve her artistic practice. During this period, her multi-canvas paintings grew in scale, and she refined her distinctive color palette. Fratt continued to gainnational recognition and was invited to be the keynote speaker at a 1990 Sotheby’s symposium in New York City. In 1993, Phoenix Art Museum acquired See-saw (1960) and True Blue (1983). Fratt's work was published in a catalog for her 1995 exhibition at Riva Yares Gallery in Scottsdale. In 1994, artist friend Geny Dignac made a film about Fratt, showing her in the studio painting and discussing her process and philosophy. In 1996, Cattle Track Arts, the homestead of George and Rachel Ellis that became a meeting place for creatives, was designated an official arts complex by the City of Scottsdale. Fratt, who was friends with George, Rachel, and their daughter Janie Ellis, spent much time at Cattle Track Arts socializing and debating with fellow artists, as well as future Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, also a friend of the Ellis and Fratt families.

2000s
In 2000, Fratt received the Arizona Governor’s Artist of the Year Award, recognizing her  lifetime accomplishments in art. A few years later, in 2003, she stopped making paintings after a major injury from a fall. In 2008, Riva Yares Gallery inScottsdale held a solo exhibition of Fratt’s work; it would be the last Fratt would attend in person. She passed away in July 2017, shortly before her first international exhibition at Germany’s Museum Art.Plus. Her memorial at Cattle Track Artsthe following November was wildly attended by family, friends, and numerous artists, demonstrating her powerful impact on the arts community. Since her passing, Fratt’s work has been propelled into the spotlight as it continues to beexhibited nationally and internationally, reinvigorating the active collection of her vibrant paintings and recognition of her dedication to abstraction.