Lot Essay
In a career renowned for paintings of extraordinarily sensitive evocations of nature, Joan Mitchell's To the Harbormaster stands out as a masterpiece. This virtuoso performance was inspired by a poem of the same title by one of her closest friends, Frank O'Hara. The subject of O'Hara's poem is the breaking of the ties that bind one--to family, to social convention--with water used as the symbol of creation and destruction, the truly transitory element.
'The inspiration of O'Hara's poetry, particularly in the 1950s, is understandable considering its similarities to Mitchell's work during that decade. O'Hara's poetry depends on ambiguity (syntactic) and is visual, intended more for the eye than the ear. Both interpreted the urban landscape, interweaving the flow of city life with the flow of feeling...His attempt at a combined sense of aesthetic wholeness, and the 'formlessness' of experience calls to mind Mitchell's endeavor at a oneness of image with constant motion' (J. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, Cornell 1988, pp. 46-47).
The swirling masses of brushstrokes in To the Harbormaster summon forth the image of a roiling sea, outside the safety and shelter of the harbor. A ship in such waters either uses its will and power to forge its own way, or it is caught and taken by the waters on an unsure course to its ultimate end. 'The menacing mood of the poem, with the sea carrying all in its clutches, is evoked in Mitchell's To the Harbormaster by the cacaphonous frenzy of short, crisscrossing strokes of intense color. The agitation is heightened as lyrical arm-long sweeps across the top of the canvas press down forcefully, even oppressively, on the ceaseless turbulence below. One senses both the excitement and the anxiety of constant departures' (ibid., p. 51).
'The inspiration of O'Hara's poetry, particularly in the 1950s, is understandable considering its similarities to Mitchell's work during that decade. O'Hara's poetry depends on ambiguity (syntactic) and is visual, intended more for the eye than the ear. Both interpreted the urban landscape, interweaving the flow of city life with the flow of feeling...His attempt at a combined sense of aesthetic wholeness, and the 'formlessness' of experience calls to mind Mitchell's endeavor at a oneness of image with constant motion' (J. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, Cornell 1988, pp. 46-47).
The swirling masses of brushstrokes in To the Harbormaster summon forth the image of a roiling sea, outside the safety and shelter of the harbor. A ship in such waters either uses its will and power to forge its own way, or it is caught and taken by the waters on an unsure course to its ultimate end. 'The menacing mood of the poem, with the sea carrying all in its clutches, is evoked in Mitchell's To the Harbormaster by the cacaphonous frenzy of short, crisscrossing strokes of intense color. The agitation is heightened as lyrical arm-long sweeps across the top of the canvas press down forcefully, even oppressively, on the ceaseless turbulence below. One senses both the excitement and the anxiety of constant departures' (ibid., p. 51).