Joan Mitchell: Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century, 1953–1962

Joan Mitchell 1953–1962

Cheim & Read

Joan Mitchell

Cheim & Read

Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century 1953–1962

Joan Mitchell Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century 1953–1962 Essay by David Anfam Cheim & Read

Outreach David Anfam The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.

—Marcel Duchamp1 By the early 1950s most of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists had attained their signature styles. When in April 1953 Joan Mitchell held her debut solo show at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in New York, it was not just the age gap between herself and these male counterparts that was conspicuous. Certainly, Mitchell was almost half a century younger than Hans Hofmann (irascible from first to last, she left his art school on her first day there) and more than two decades the junior of even Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.

However, with hindsight the striking feature is the creative distance she had traveled in a relatively short time. Like Athena sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, this self-styled “lady painter” had come abreast with her erstwhile peers in a trice.2 Indeed, it might be

Exhibition poster, 9th Street Art Exhibition, May 21–June 10, 1951

no great exaggeration to regard Mitchell in these years as the foremost female American abstractionist (Lee Krasner’s finest hours lay ahead).3 By any reckoning, it was an extraordinary, self-assured start.

Although observers have discerned de Kooning, Pollock,

Arshile Gorky and Franz Kline in Mitchell’s output of the first half of the 1950s, the end results still remain singular. Such canvases as Untitled (pl. 1), City Landscape and Hudson River Day Line (both 1955) doubtless owe something of their ambient pallor and frenetic fragmentation to de Kooning, especially his magnum opus Excavation (1950). Likewise, the roiling energies recall Pollock and the fluent pigment attests to Mitchell’s interest in Gorky—it echoes the ultrathin oil washes in the latter’s Water of the Flowery Mill and How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life (both 1944). As these two titles suggest, Gorky was a painter of memory. The same applied to Mitchell—except that what unfolded artistically from here until the end of her life, as it were, was the legacy from the city where her grandfather designed bridges and her mother wrote poetry.4 In short, Chicago and its outsize lake. This much and many related details are a matter of art historical record.5 Less discussed is how water doubles as the matrix of abstraction and memory.

Consider Abstract Expressionist instances as otherwise disparate

as de Kooning’s . . . Whose Name Was Writ in Water (1975), Pollock’s Full Fathom Five (1947) and Rothko’s Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1944) to witness water employed as material (mimicked by the extreme fluidity of touch and texture in the first), metaphor (the Shakespearean allusion and oceanic submergence that permeates the second) and symbol (the sea’s edge standing for the threshold of consciousness in the last). From a contemporary perspective, the near-ubiquity of water in Bill Viola’s videos attests to its age-old status as a medium of temporality (birth, maturity and death are his recurrent themes) and motion (often the figures remain unchanged while the aqueous cascades upon them appear cyclical). Perhaps most apposite is water’s intrinsic mutability. The aforementioned Untitled exemplifies how Mitchell’s imagery stemmed in equal parts from deliquescence, poetry and geography. Her vision bridged all three.

Nor, now, is the chosen verb “bridge” casual.

Apart from her grandfather’s profession, Mitchell surely

knew—via her mother’s absorption in poetry—Hart Crane ’s verse, a dimension oddly absent from much critical commentary. In 1947 she had moved to 1 Fulton Street, under the Brooklyn Bridge and across

the East River from Manhattan. To pun on the title of Arthur Miller’s drama performed eight years later (A View from the Bridge), this was a room with a view—and what a view. Crane hymned the bridge ’s presence as a deity of sorts:

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him, Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

[. . .]

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced As though the sun took step of thee, yet left Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,— Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!6

A resemblance between Crane ’s lines and the chill dawn atmosphere, the fluttering rhythms as of a flock of birds and “silver-paced” light that permeates Mitchell’s Untitled and comparable canvases may be superficial or topical. Ultimately, though, this is beside the point.

Rather, at stake are qualities the critic Harold Bloom discerns:

Walker Evans Brooklyn Bridge, New York 1929, film negative, 2 ½ × 4 ¼ in

“Crane is a difficult poet, intensely metaphorical and allusive . . . his logic of metaphor characteristically gives us the sensation of an impacted density, sometimes resistant to unraveling.”7 Exactly the same might be said of Mitchell’s involute art. A fortiori, it also applies to the factor that Bloom identifies in the poet’s mood, “Ecstasy,

by no means always erotic, is prevalent in Crane ’s poetry. He is a rhapsode.” 8 Difficulty, metaphor (a fundamental agency in Mitchell’s lifelong passion for poetry), allusion and “impacted density” often “resistant to unraveling” provide an exact description of where Mitchell’s art was headed through the 1950s and beyond. Further connections obtain.

With titular allusions (albeit the titles always followed the

images) along the lines of Water Gate and Untitled (Blue Michigan) (pl. 14), her repeated transatlantic voyages from 1948 onward and the ever-present whiteness (both painted and primed canvas left bare) that seems to function like some universal ether allowing other colors to expand and contract within it—compare the refractions of light and air in a river, lake or sea9—Mitchell joins the great tradition of American water watchers. This lineage extends from Herman Melville (“meditation and water are wedded forever”10), Walt Whitman (“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”11) to Robert Frost:

They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar To any watch they keep?12

and Frank O’Hara, a contemporary whose poem, “To the Harbormaster,” Mitchell found seminal. But the world’s waters— whether Chicago’s Lake Michigan, the East River, the Atlantic Ocean or even Claude Monet’s lily ponds in Giverny13—demand their being crossed. Re-enter, center stage, the bridge leitmotif.

Here Mitchell said it all, inadvertently fulfilling an earlier quip

by Duchamp (see the epigraph, above): “I love bridges. I remember writing to Barney about the bridges over the Seine as dachshunds compared to the Brooklyn Bridge. A bridge to me is beautiful. I like the idea of getting from one side to the other.”14 Tellingly, the misty or maze-like images during the earlier 1950s—closer, if anything, to the Portuguese Maria Helena Vieira da Silva’s intricate pictures than to how Abstract Expressionism declined at the hands of some of its lesser followers into a generic slapdash idiom15—intimated a covert infrastructure. Inexorably, this underlying pulse emerged during the second half of the decade as Mitchell’s hallmark gesture. Neither altogether angular like Kline ’s colliding vectors nor anywhere near as gossamer as Pollock’s skeins, it struck a balance—as any wellengineered structure should—between brute powerfulness and grace.

Above all, it evokes Crane ’s imagistic Brooklyn Bridge transformed

through introspection into palpable strokes, emotions lent direction in the manner that he had changed a massy subject into the leap of an “inviolate curve.” Mitchell’s touch multiplied these ciphers apace.

In four Untitled paintings (pls. 3, 4, 5 and 6) the curves

progressively control their white ambience, akin to how human dexterity at its best on a far bigger plane builds architectonic structures—as old as the Pyramids or as recent as, say, Guggenheim Bilbao—that both master and marry encompassing nature. This tracery reflects Mitchell’s painterly reach, a span impetuous yet scaled to human proportions.16 Rudy Burckhardt captured it in a photograph of Mitchell at work in 1957. Her right arm extends toward the canvas’s uppermost margins with heels lifted from the floor to enable the uplift: a balancing act between centrifugal and centripetal urges.17 Needless to add, the painting in progress was Bridge (1957). In fact, when interviewed for Art News in 1957 Mitchell was tackling this very piece (and also did another version of the theme completed the previous year). By then, the liminal Brooklyn studio had segued to a Lower East Side walkup. At one point she remarked: “I am up against a wall looking for a view. If I looked out of my window, what would I paint?”18 The question was rhetorical insofar as her sightlines lay in

the mind’s eye. Namely, the real East River bridge now transfigured in memory. Why memory? Aptly, William Wordsworth still provides the classic explanation.

150 years or so before Mitchell, the Romantic Wordsworth wrote,

“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. It takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”19 Note the stress on recollection: as with certain wines and spirits, time allows memory to distill the essence of experience ’s raw stuff. When Mitchell’s style modulated around 1960—she introduced rich tones of flame, indigo, leaf green and violet allied to brushwork alternating between violence and fine-grained delicacy—an aura prevails, as of Wordsworth’s storied golden daffodils or Marcel Proust’s mnemonic madeleine, of strong feelings recouped in aesthetic rumination (notwithstanding however fraught their creator’s personal life proved). This was the measure of Mitchell’s imaginative leaps. It demands a final word.

Of course, all bridges entail physical outreach. Nevertheless,

broadly understood, the literal construct is a synecdoche for larger human aspirations.20 We talk of “building bridges,” recognize that a “bridgehead” means decisiveness and remember that to “reach out” ranks among the English language ’s commonest Americanisms.

But the existential edge runs deeper. As a woman among men,21 a Chicagoan in New York, the scion of a deaf mother, someone who counted male homosexuals among her closest circle22 but alienated many would-be friends with her aggression, a gentile in a socioartistic milieu that numbered many Jews,23 an alcoholic and an American drawn fast to France, Mitchell was always an outsider.

If they should ever want to get in, outsiders must cross the distance between themselves and those regarding them as “others.” In this sense, Mitchell’s whole life, ambition and work were a grand outreach.

Marcel Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case,” in The Blind Man 2 (May 1917): 5.

Patricia Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011) offers an extensive account of her subject’s gender issues.

3 See David Anfam, Lee Krasner: The Umber Paintings 1959–1962 (New York: Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2018).

4 The best overviews remain Jane Livingston, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002) and Judith E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1988).

5 Overlooked in these numerous biographical cues/clues is the deeper significance of Mitchell’s youthful prowess as a figure skater. By definition, the skater must walk on water, creating structure from its inherent formlessness. Put another way, Mitchell learned to draw in time, motion and ice.

6 Hart Crane, “To Brooklyn Bridge” [1927], in Marc Simon, ed., The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (New York & London: Liveright, 2001), 43.

7 Harold Bloom, “Centenary Introduction,” in ibid., xii.

8 Ibid.

9 Mitchell held at best an equivocal attitude toward whiteness, evidently associating it with, inter alia, death; see Bernstock, op. cit., 39.

10 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (New York: Dutton, [1851], 1907), 8.

1 2

Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” [1855], in Francis Murphy, ed., Walt Whitman: The Complete Poems (London & New York: Penguin, 1975), 189–96.

The crossing would become the exact location of the future Brooklyn Bridge.

12 Robert Frost, “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” [1936], in Ian Hamilton, ed., Robert Frost: Selected Poems (London & New York: Penguin, 1973), 179.

13 Hence Monet’s little Japanese bridge.

14 Joan Mitchell, in Bernstock, op. cit., 45.

15 That Mitchell knew the Portuguese woman’s achievement is most improbable—the commonality rests on a shared debt to Paul Cézanne and a post-Cubist spatial armature.

However, Vieira da Silva exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery as early as 1943.

16 Cf. Bernstock, op. cit., 35: “Paintings of 1956 are dominated by arcing strokes, often of arm’s length.” This belongs to the same somatic criterion that de Kooning established: “If I stretch my arms next to the rest of myself and wonder where my fingers are—that is all the space I need as a painter.” See de Kooning, “What Abstract Art Means to Me” [1951], in The Collected Writings of Willem de Kooning (Madras & New York: Hanuman Books, 1988), 60.

17 Livingston, op. cit., 14.

18 Joan Mitchell, in Irving Sandler, “Mitchell Paints a Picture,” Art News 56 (October 1957): 45. This was the most insightful early publication on Mitchell. Ironically, when Sandler came to write a history of Abstract Expressionism’s “triumph” (1970), not a word acknowledged Mitchell. This masculinist perspective has since been thoroughly revised by art historians, myself included.

19 William Wordsworth, “Preface to the Second Edition of ‘Lyrical Ballads’” [1800], in Thomas Hutchinson and Ernest de Selincourt, eds., Wordsworth: Complete Poetical Works (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), 740.

20 From the ancient Roman officer Horatius, who held the bridge against the Etruscan attack, to the spectacular (filmed) collapse of the Tacoma Bridge (1940) and the crucial Allied victory in 1945 regarding the bridge at Remagen, these structures have always been arenas associated with derring-do and drama.

21 Cf. Livingston, op. cit., 10: “Mitchell was, among other things, a classic victim of her gender.”

22 Another reason why Crane perhaps attracted Mitchell.

23 Her first (and last) husband, the innovative publisher Barney Rosset, was half-Jewish.

11

© Art Ex Ltd 2018

1. Untitled 1953–54 oil on canvas 81 × 69 in 205.7 × 175.3 cm

2. Liens Colorés c.1956 oil on canvas 55 ½ × 74 in 141 × 188 cm

3. Untitled 1956 oil on canvas 91 ¼ × 59 ¼ in 231.8 × 150.5 cm

4. Untitled 1957 oil on canvas 78 × 75 in 198.1 × 190.5 cm

5. Untitled c.1958 oil on canvas 75 × 71 in 190.5 × 180.3 cm

6. Untitled 1958 oil on canvas 78 ⅜ × 68 ⅝ in 199.1 × 174.3 cm

7. Slate 1959 oil on canvas 77 × 74 in 195.6 × 188 cm

8. Untitled 1960 oil on canvas 78 × 69 in 198.1 × 175.3 cm

9. Untitled 1960 oil on canvas 48 × 71 in 121.9 × 180.3 cm

10. Untitled 1960 oil on canvas 63 ¾ × 38 ⅛ in 161.9 × 96.8 cm

11. Untitled 1960 oil on canvas 39 ⅜ × 39 ⅜ in 100 × 100 cm

12. Mandres 1961–62, oil on canvas 87 ⅜ × 79 in 222 × 200.7 cm

13. Garden Party 1961–62 oil on canvas 63 ½ × 50 ¾ in 161.3 × 128.9 cm

14. Untitled (Blue Michigan) 1961 oil on canvas 50 ⅞ × 63 ¾ in 129.2 × 161.9 cm

BIOGRAPHY 1925 1992

Born February 12, Chicago Died October 30, Paris

EDUCATION 1942–44 Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 1944–47 B.F.A., The School of the Art Institute of Chicago 1950 Columbia University, New York 1950 M.F.A., The School of the Art Institute of Chicago SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2018

Joan Mitchell: Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century, 1953–1962, Cheim & Read, New York

2017–19 Mitchell/Riopelle: Nothing in Moderation, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec; traveling

to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Fonds Hélène et Édouard Leclerc, Landern, France (two-

person exhibition) 2016

Joan Mitchell: Drawing into Painting, Cheim & Read, New York Visual Poetry: An Exhibition of Abstract Expressionist Prints by Joan Mitchell, Andrea S. Keogh Art and Design, Jamestown, Rhode Island

2015

2014

Joan Mitchell: At the Harbor and in the Grand Vallée, curated by Dr. Jeffrey Grove, Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York Joan Mitchell Retrospective: Her Life and Paintings, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria; traveled to Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany Joan Mitchell: The Sketchbook Drawings, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany Joan Mitchell: Trees, Cheim & Read, New York Joan Mitchell: The Black Drawings and Related Works, 1964–1967, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

2013

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany Joan Mitchell, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro; traveled to Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Joan Mitchell: At Home in Poetry, Poetry Foundation, Chicago Joan Mitchell: An American Master, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

2011

Joan Mitchell: The Last Paintings, Cheim & Read, New York; traveled to Hauser & Wirth, London Joan Mitchell: Paintings from the Fifties, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

2010

Joan Mitchell: The Last Decade, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California; traveled to Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio Joan Mitchell, Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Joan Mitchell in New Orleans: Paintings, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana Joan Mitchell in New Orleans: Prints, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana Joan Mitchell in New Orleans: Works on Paper, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana Joan Mitchell: The Roaring Fifties, Galerie Thomas Modern, Munich

2009

Joan Mitchell: Drawings, Kukje Gallery, Seoul

2008

Joan Mitchell: A Discovery of the New York School, Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany; traveled to Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny, France Joan Mitchell: Sunflowers, Cheim & Read, New York; traveled to Hauser & Wirth, Zürich Joan Mitchell: Paintings and Pastels, 1973–1983, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York

2007

Joan Mitchell: Leaving America, Hauser & Wirth, London Joan Mitchell: Works on Paper, 1956–1992, Cheim & Read, New York Joan Mitchell: The Last Prints, Susan Sheehan Gallery, New York

2006

Joan Mitchell, de Young Museum, San Francisco Joan Mitchell: A Survey, 1952–1992, Kukje Gallery, Seoul

2005

Joan Mitchell: Prints from the Foundation, Susan Sheehan Gallery, New York

Joan Mitchell: The 1946–1952 Sketchbook Drawings and Related Works, Pollock Gallery, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas Joan Mitchell: Frémicourt Paintings, 1960–62, Cheim & Read, New York Joan Mitchell Sketchbook: 1949–51, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York

2002

Joan Mitchell, Robert Miller Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell: Petit, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; traveled to Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa Joan Mitchell, The Presence of Absence: Selected Paintings, 1956–1992, Cheim & Read, New York Joan Mitchell: Memory Abstracted, Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York Working with Poets: Pastels and Paintings, Tibor de Nagy, New York

1999

The Nature of Abstraction: Joan Mitchell Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1998

Joan Mitchell: From Nature to Abstraction, Nave Museum, Victoria, Texas Joan Mitchell: Paintings 1950–1955 from the Estate of Joan Mitchell, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1997

Joan Mitchell, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Centre Julio Gonzáles, Valencia, Spain Joan Mitchell: Selected Paintings, 1975–1977, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York Joan Mitchell, Galerie Won, Seoul Pastels by Joan Mitchell, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

1996

Joan Mitchell: Pastels, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen, France Joan Mitchell: Paintings from 1956 to 1958, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1995

Joan Mitchell: Pastels, Les Cordeliers Châteauroux, Châteauroux, France Joan Mitchell: Tilleuls, 1978: Huiles sur toile & Pastels, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris Joan Mitchell: Selected Paintings and Pastels 1950–1990, Manfred Baumgartner Galleries, Inc., Washington, D.C.

1994

Joan Mitchell: Pastels, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris Joan Mitchell “...my black paintings...”1964, Robert Miller Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell: Oeuvres de 1951 à 1982, Musée des Beaux Arts de Nantes, Nantes, France Joan Mitchell: Les dernières années 1983–1992, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris Joan Mitchell: Works on Paper, Montgomery-Glasoe Fine Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota Joan Mitchell in Vétheuil, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California

1993

83rd Annual Exhibition: Joan Mitchell, Maier Museum of Art, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, Virginia Joan Mitchell, Galerie Ulrike Barthel, Bremen, Germany Joan Mitchell: 26 Farbige Radierungen, 1972–1989, Galerie Daniel Blau, Munich Joan Mitchell 1992, Robert Miller Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell Prints and Illustrated Books: A Retrospective, Susan Sheehan Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell: Etchings and Lithographs, Pace Prints, New York

1992

Joan Mitchell: New Prints, Bobbie Greenfield Fine Art, Venice, California Joan Mitchell, Le Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC) de Haute-Normandie & l’Association des Amis du Château d’Etelan, Château d’Etelan, Saint-Maurice-d’Etelan, France Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris Joan Mitchell: Trees & Other Paintings 1960 to 1990, Laura Carpenter Fine Art, Santa Fe Joan Mitchell: Pastel, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Joan Mitchell: Recent Lithographs, Susan Sheehan Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell: Sunflowers and Trees Series, Tyler Graphics, Mt. Kisco, New York

1991

Joan Mitchell, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1990

Joan Mitchell: Paintings and Drawings, Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell: Champs, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

1989

Joan Mitchell, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

1988

Joan Mitchell: Selected Paintings Spanning Thirty Years, Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles The Paintings of Joan Mitchell: Thirty-Six Years of Natural Expressionism, organized by Judith

1987

Bernstock, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; traveled to Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

1986

Joan Mitchell: An Exhibition of Paintings and Works on Paper, Keny & Johnson Gallery, Columbus, Ohio Joan Mitchell: New Paintings, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York

1985

Joan Mitchell: The Sixties, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York

1984

Joan Mitchell: La Grande Vallée et autres peintures, Galerie Jean Fournier at the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, Grand Palais, Paris Joan Mitchell – La Grande Vallée, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

1983

Joan Mitchell: New Paintings, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York

1982

Joan Mitchell: Choix des peintures 1970–1982, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris

1981

Joan Mitchell: Paintings and Works on Paper, Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, Texas Joan Mitchell: New Paintings, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York Joan Mitchell, Gloria Luria Gallery, Bay Harbor, Florida

1980

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris Joan Mitchell: Major Paintings, Richard Hines Gallery, Seattle Joan Mitchell: The Fifties, Important Paintings, Xavier Fourcade Inc., New York

1979

Joan Mitchell, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco

1978

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris Joan Mitchell, Webb & Parsons Gallery, Bedford Village, New York Joan Mitchell: New Paintings and Pastels, Ruth S. Schaffner Gallery, Los Angeles

Joan Mitchell: Peintures, 1986 et 1987 – River, Lille, Chord, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

1977

Joan Mitchell: New Paintings, 1977, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York

1976

Joan Mitchell: New Paintings, 1976, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

1974

Joan Mitchell: Recent Paintings, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago Joan Mitchell, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

1973

Joan Mitchell, Ruth S. Schaffner Gallery, Los Angeles

1972

My Five Years in the Country: An Exhibition of Forty-Nine Paintings by Joan Mitchell, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; traveled to Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, where work was exhibited as Blue Series 1970–1971 and The Fields Series 1971–1972

1971

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier et Cie, Paris

1969

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier et Cie, Paris

1968

Joan Mitchell: Recent Paintings, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York

1967

Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jean Fournier et Cie, Paris

1965

Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York

1962

Joan Mitchell: Ausstellung von ölbildern, Galerie Klipstein und Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland Joan Mitchell, Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris Joan Mitchell, Galerie Lawrence, Paris Paintings by Joan Mitchell, The New Gallery, Hayden Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

1961

Joan Mitchell Paintings 1951–1961, Mr. and Mrs. John Russell Mitchell Gallery, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois Joan Mitchell, Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles

Recent Paintings by Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York Joan Mitchell, B.C. Holland Gallery, Chicago Joan Mitchell, Holland-Goldowsky Galllery, Chicago

1960

Joan Mitchell, Galleria dell’Ariete, Milan Joan Mitchell, Gallery Neufville, Paris

1958

Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York

1957

Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York

1955

Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York

1953

Joan Mitchell, Stable Gallery, New York

1952

Joan Mitchell, New Gallery, New York

1950

1943

Joan Mitchell, Saint Paul Gallery and School of Art, St. Paul, Minnesota Paintings by Joan Mitchell, Bank Lane Gallery, Lake Forest, Illinois Solo Exhibition, home of Mrs. George Roberts, Lake Forest, Illinois Solo Exhibition, Francis Parker School, Chicago

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, Portugal Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida Butler Institute of Contemporary Art, Youngstown, Ohio Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, Lewiston, New York Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas Daros-Exhibitions, Zürich Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, New York Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul, France Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Puteaux, France Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, France Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, Belgium Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York Georgia Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts Hillman Foundation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana Iwaki City Art Museum, Fukushima, Japan J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles Johnson Wax Collection, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri Lieu d’Art et Action Contemporaine de Dunkerque (LAAC), Dunkerque, France Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, Issoudun, France Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen, France Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, New York National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Osaka City Art Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Japan Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island Rockefeller Institute, New York Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri Samsung Museum, Seoul San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka-shi, Japan Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, Chicago Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Stanford University, Anderson Collection, Palo Alto, California Tate Gallery, London Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Fine Arts Center, Amherst, Massachusetts University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut

Printed in an edition of 2,000 on the occasion of the Cheim & Read exhibition, September 6–October 27, 2018 Printer Trifolio Color Separations Altaimage, New York ISBN 978–1–944316–15–0 All images ©Estate of Joan Mitchell Front endpapers: ©2018 Estate of Rudy Burckhardt/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Rear endpapers: Frémicourt studio, c. 1960. Photographer unknown, courtesy Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives. Exhibition poster, 9th Street Art Exhibition, courtesy Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives. Essay Figure: ©Walker Evans Archive, ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resources, NY. Plate 7. JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. All other plates, from private collections. Photography Brian Buckley, Chris Burke, Paul Hester and Jeffrey Wells. Editorial Assistance Sarah Dansberger.

Cheim & Read gratefully acknowledges the collectors who have so generously loaned their paintings, as well as Heather James Fine Art, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection and McClain Gallery for their invaluable support. We extend our sincere appreciation to Olena Tuttle and Karen Polack of Cheim & Read for their work in the realization of this exhibition. We also thank the Joan Mitchell Foundation especially Christa Blatchford, Courtney Lynch and Laura Morris as well as Suzi Villiger from the Joan Mitchell Catalogue Raisonné.

Joan Mitchell Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century 1953–1962

Design John Cheim

Essay David Anfam

Cheim & Read

Editor Ellen Robinson

Joan Mitchell 1953–1962

Cheim & Read

Joan Mitchell

Cheim & Read

Paintings from the Middle of the Last Century 1953–1962