| Joan Mitchell: Paintings and Pastels 1973 - 1983May 3, 2008- June 21, 2008
Joan Mitchell was a gifted painter. In her primary medium of oil paint, she
created powerful and unforgettable works. Her paintings project an impressive
physical energy and at monumental scale demonstrate the full measure of her
ambitious goals. But oil paint was not her only medium; in addition to exploring
etching and lithography, Mitchell embraced the medium of pastel and created a
substantial body of work. This exhibition surveys her work in both paint and
pastel between 1973 and 1983, a decade bracketed by two major cycles of
paintings. During these years, a dynamic interaction between her paintings and
pastels becomes increasingly apparent.
The exhibition will include nearly thirty works in both mediums. The paintings
and drawings from the early and mid-1970s are atmospheric, and among them are
two of the works in which Mitchell developed a composition in relation to a
poem typed on the sheet of paper. During the next several years, she introduced
an emphatic vertical mark into both pastels and paintings. In the exhibition are
three pastels and one painting from the series titled Tilleuls, a group of works
named for a mature and impressive linden tree that crowned the terrace of her
home in the country outside of Paris. A brilliant yellow floats above hovering
bands of blue in a large Untitled pastel from 1979.
In 1982, Mitchell produced a greater than usual number of small-scale paintings.
A close look at the paintings of this period strongly suggests that she was seeking
to achieve in oil paint a kind of light that resulted from bold juxtapositions of
pastel pigments. The unprecedented and challenging color combinations of
several series of paintings she titled Gently, Merrily and Petit Matin – green and
orange, magenta and green, red and orange, yellow and pink – reflect the
influence of her work in pastel. One of the six large paintings made that year is
Buckwheat. Mitchell juxtaposed the heat of cadmium colors against cool cobalt
and flashes of cerulean blue and established a shimmering radiance that clearly
evokes her admiration for Van Gogh, and is titled in reference to his paintings of
wheat fields.
This is the third exhibition of Joan Mitchell at Lennon, Weinberg. The most
recent took place in 2002 at the time of the important retrospective exhibition of
her work at the Whitney Museum. An illustrated catalog is available.
Reviews of Joan Mitchell: Paintings and Pastels 1973 - 1983New York Times
May 23, 2008 | | Karen Rosenberg | | "Joan Mitchell’s pastels, the subject of this small exhibition, rival her better-known oil paintings in bravura and complexity. Working during the late 1970s and early ’80s at her studio in Vétheuil, France, she put an Abstract Expressionist spin on a medium more often associated with the French Impressionists...." |
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