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Lot Essay
Radiating a powerful beauty, Untitled is an exemplary demonstration of Joan Mitchell’s absolute mastery of her medium. Energetic yet meditative, vigorous yet lyrical, Untitled harnesses the very feeling of being within nature and translates it into a sublime abstract symphony of color, gesture and texture. Painted in 1976-77, nearly a decade after the artist permanently moved from America to France, this intimate triptych dates from a period in her life that was significant, both professionally and personally. In 1972, she had the first of several major solo shows that decade, in 1976 she joined the dealer Xavier Fourcade, which allowed her career to flourish in both the US and Europe, and in 1979, her long-term relationship with the French-Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle came to an end. It was also the time when her work ripened into the unguarded ‘all-over’ style that became synonymous with her celebrated body of late work, examples of which exist in museum collections all over the world.
Always a highly physical painter, Mitchell’s confident painterly gestures sweep across Untitled’s compact trio of canvases. The paint has been applied in a variety of ways, ranging from fluid, broad strokes to weighty impasto dabs, giving the work a vital sense of movement. Flicks of bright orange and pure white splatter across the whole work with an energy that rivals Jackson Pollock. Yet though the work is unambiguously abstract, it is subtly evocative of an autumnal landscape seen from afar. Dark cerulean blue spreads horizontally across the center of the three canvases above a patch of deep forest green, like a river winding through fields. Generous daubs of olive green, burnt umber and raw sienna dominate the left and right canvases, as though the scene is being viewed through a haze of dying leaves. A small area of aquamarine draws the eye to the top of the middle canvas, in the same way one might look up to see a glimpse of blue sky. Mitchell has integrated the white of the canvas itself into the composition, which infuses the painting with an invigorating sense of fresh air, sunlight and the outdoors.
Mitchell was deeply inspired by the landscape, especially after 1967, when she bought a two-acre estate in Vétheuil, a small village overlooking the Seine. The property included a cottage where Claude Monet lived between 1878 and 1881, but Mitchell was always adamant that he exerted little influence over her work. She did, however, believe that “French artists have a sense of beauty—a sense of color—that isn’t allowed in New York City. To me, painting is French” (J. Mitchell, quoted in D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, New York Times, November 24, 1991). But of the French artists, it was Cézanne, not Monet, that she most openly admired; his sense of the importance of underlying structure can be seen in the fine calibrations of color, line and space that Mitchell achieves in her paintings.
Despite her love for France and its painters, the years Mitchell spent living in New York were also highly formative. In 1950, she saw her first paintings by Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and immediately sought them out in their studios. Though her work became influenced by their gestural expressionist style, she never imitated it—her interests lay elsewhere. As Deborah Soloman has said, “What de Kooning was to flesh, Mitchell was to trees, sea and sky.” (D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, The New York Times, November 24, 1991). She became one of the few women admitted into to the influential Artists’ Club, and in 1951 exhibited in the “Ninth Street Show” with a group of artists, including Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, that would come to be known as Abstract Expressionists. Mitchell shared their passionate belief in the physicality of painting itself, and its ability to capture a fleeting feeling. As she once said, “I don’t set out to achieve a specific thing, perhaps to catch a motion or to catch a feeling. Call it layer painting, gestural painting, easel painting or whatever you want. I paint oil on canvas—without an easel. Conventional methods? I do not condense things. I try to eliminate clichés, extraneous material. I try to make it exact. My painting is not an allegory or a story. It is more of a poem” (J. Mitchell, quoted in K. Stiles and P. Selz, (eds.), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, California, 1996, p. 33).
Born into a highly cultured, wealthy Chicago family in 1925, poetry played an important part in Mitchell’s life from the beginning. Her mother, Marion Strobel, was a poet and the co-editor of the magazine Poetry, and leading modern poets visited the family home, including T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Mitchell’s erudition led her to befriend many poets, and for her paintings to be profoundly influenced by literature. The individual canvases within a triptych—a format that she returned to again and again—can almost be seen as stanzas within poem, in that the canvases are discrete entities but mutually dependent. And each formal element within her paintings is like a word within a poem; it is there for a purpose, carefully chosen to serve the final vision. Indeed, although the energy of Mitchell’s gestures can give the impression that she executed her paintings swiftly, in fact her paintings often took several months to complete. Her process was highly contemplative, as she once described: “There’s no ‘action’ here. I paint a little. Then I sit and I look at the painting, sometimes for hours. Eventually the painting tells me what to do” (J. Mitchell, quoted in D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, The New York Times, November 24, 1991).
By the time Untitled was painted, Mitchell worked in the afternoon and at night, never within the landscape itself. Her feelings for her subject were therefore filtered through the imagination as she painted, leaving only the most important sensations for the canvas. She once said, “It’s hard to squeeze paint if I don’t feel like it. If I don’t feel what I’m doing there’s no point in it. Real. Felt is the only word you’d say. There has to be meaning to what you’re putting on” (J. Mitchell, quoted in http:/bombmagazine.article/810/joan-mitchell, accessed 28 September 2017).
Always a highly physical painter, Mitchell’s confident painterly gestures sweep across Untitled’s compact trio of canvases. The paint has been applied in a variety of ways, ranging from fluid, broad strokes to weighty impasto dabs, giving the work a vital sense of movement. Flicks of bright orange and pure white splatter across the whole work with an energy that rivals Jackson Pollock. Yet though the work is unambiguously abstract, it is subtly evocative of an autumnal landscape seen from afar. Dark cerulean blue spreads horizontally across the center of the three canvases above a patch of deep forest green, like a river winding through fields. Generous daubs of olive green, burnt umber and raw sienna dominate the left and right canvases, as though the scene is being viewed through a haze of dying leaves. A small area of aquamarine draws the eye to the top of the middle canvas, in the same way one might look up to see a glimpse of blue sky. Mitchell has integrated the white of the canvas itself into the composition, which infuses the painting with an invigorating sense of fresh air, sunlight and the outdoors.
Mitchell was deeply inspired by the landscape, especially after 1967, when she bought a two-acre estate in Vétheuil, a small village overlooking the Seine. The property included a cottage where Claude Monet lived between 1878 and 1881, but Mitchell was always adamant that he exerted little influence over her work. She did, however, believe that “French artists have a sense of beauty—a sense of color—that isn’t allowed in New York City. To me, painting is French” (J. Mitchell, quoted in D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, New York Times, November 24, 1991). But of the French artists, it was Cézanne, not Monet, that she most openly admired; his sense of the importance of underlying structure can be seen in the fine calibrations of color, line and space that Mitchell achieves in her paintings.
Despite her love for France and its painters, the years Mitchell spent living in New York were also highly formative. In 1950, she saw her first paintings by Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and immediately sought them out in their studios. Though her work became influenced by their gestural expressionist style, she never imitated it—her interests lay elsewhere. As Deborah Soloman has said, “What de Kooning was to flesh, Mitchell was to trees, sea and sky.” (D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, The New York Times, November 24, 1991). She became one of the few women admitted into to the influential Artists’ Club, and in 1951 exhibited in the “Ninth Street Show” with a group of artists, including Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, that would come to be known as Abstract Expressionists. Mitchell shared their passionate belief in the physicality of painting itself, and its ability to capture a fleeting feeling. As she once said, “I don’t set out to achieve a specific thing, perhaps to catch a motion or to catch a feeling. Call it layer painting, gestural painting, easel painting or whatever you want. I paint oil on canvas—without an easel. Conventional methods? I do not condense things. I try to eliminate clichés, extraneous material. I try to make it exact. My painting is not an allegory or a story. It is more of a poem” (J. Mitchell, quoted in K. Stiles and P. Selz, (eds.), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, California, 1996, p. 33).
Born into a highly cultured, wealthy Chicago family in 1925, poetry played an important part in Mitchell’s life from the beginning. Her mother, Marion Strobel, was a poet and the co-editor of the magazine Poetry, and leading modern poets visited the family home, including T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Mitchell’s erudition led her to befriend many poets, and for her paintings to be profoundly influenced by literature. The individual canvases within a triptych—a format that she returned to again and again—can almost be seen as stanzas within poem, in that the canvases are discrete entities but mutually dependent. And each formal element within her paintings is like a word within a poem; it is there for a purpose, carefully chosen to serve the final vision. Indeed, although the energy of Mitchell’s gestures can give the impression that she executed her paintings swiftly, in fact her paintings often took several months to complete. Her process was highly contemplative, as she once described: “There’s no ‘action’ here. I paint a little. Then I sit and I look at the painting, sometimes for hours. Eventually the painting tells me what to do” (J. Mitchell, quoted in D. Solomon, ‘In Monet’s Light’, The New York Times, November 24, 1991).
By the time Untitled was painted, Mitchell worked in the afternoon and at night, never within the landscape itself. Her feelings for her subject were therefore filtered through the imagination as she painted, leaving only the most important sensations for the canvas. She once said, “It’s hard to squeeze paint if I don’t feel like it. If I don’t feel what I’m doing there’s no point in it. Real. Felt is the only word you’d say. There has to be meaning to what you’re putting on” (J. Mitchell, quoted in http:/bombmagazine.article/810/joan-mitchell, accessed 28 September 2017).