XO Drawing II

The Soho Weekly News: 1974 “On Art,” Frank, Peter.

“Michael Gallagher, whose paintings and drawings hang at Razor to the 14th, is not afraid to 'look like' several abstract expressionists, including de Kooning, Twombly, Goodnough, Richenburg, Held, and Knox Martin -- and that's in one painting. Other pictures conjure up Hofmann, Tworkov, Gorky, Stella, et al. A varied ancestry, but Gallagher not only unites them successfully, he still emerges his own man. His drawings have more formal integrity and originality, they are more purely an expression of an aesthetic personality, while the paintings have that distinctly historical awareness to them. But their formulation, with its highly rhythmic choreographing of disparate forms and elements -- straight edges, loops, squiggles, drips, grids, jagged strokes, calligraphic gestures, side by side parallel structures, interwoven forms, continuous and discontinuous lines -- and especially their gala color, with baby blues jammed up against hot reds, chalky greens, bloody flesh tones, make for fresh, vivid, and extremely likable pictures. Some are a bit more sober and regular than this, but hardly less attractive for it.”