Drips, spattering, globs of paint smeared over larger-than-life canvases. Joan Mitchell is a powerhouse.
Mitchell is known for her abstract, streaky works that manage to convey sometimes incredibly powerful, provocative emotions.
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Ladybug (1957)
Museum of Modern Art |
During
the period between 1960 and 1964, Mitchell moved away from the all-over style
and bright colors of her earlier compositions to concentrate on sombre hues and
dense central masses. The
marks on these works were said to be extraordinary: “the paint flung and
squeezed on to the canvases, spilling and spluttering across their surfaces and
smeared on with the artist’s fingers.”
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Cous Cous (1961-62)
Currier Museum of Art |
As a contemporary of famous artist Jackson
Pollock, her work displays an equal amount of strength and vitality. To be quite honest, I much prefer Mitchell's slow, deliberate methods to Pollock's haphazard drips, and how could anyone dismiss the varied, unexpected use of color on her canvases?
Leading visitors to Mitchell's work Cous Cous, at the Currier, the response is often "My child could paint better." But I always try to talk about the importance of the process. From this vantage point Mitchell's process becomes laborious, her conscious efforts show in every brush stroke. She said that she wanted her paintings “to
convey the feeling of the dying sunflower” and “some of them come out like
young girls, very coy … they’re very human.” Perhaps that is what draws me to Mitchell's work over Pollock's. There is something alive, organic, representational. It doesn't matter that you can't pin it on a particular object or figure, but you can relate somehow.
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| Yves (1991) |
Thus far, my favorite work of Mitchell's is No Birds. An
admirer of Vincent van Gogh’s work, Mitchell observed in one of his final
paintings, Wheatfield with Crows
(1890), the symbology of death, suicide, hopelessness, depression and darkness.
With her sense that Wheatfield with Crows
was a suicide note she painted a painting called No Birds as a response and homage.
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| No Birds (1987) |
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