.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Painted as a triptych, Last October is a small-scale, painterly tour-de-force, teeming with forcefully applied vertical strokes that range from stubby rectangularity to more distended linearity. Joan Mitchell's use of individual strokes as a unit of visual structure, intertwining natural and emotional forces reflects the influence of the divided strokes of the Post-Impressionists and the Fauves, though in Mitchell's painting, the seen and the felt have been completely internalized. Indeed, the thick impasto and rich yellows, oranges and intense greens bring her much-admired van Gogh to mind.
The mid-late 1970s were an important period in Mitchell's artistic career. In 1974, she had a major retrospective at the Whitney, in 1976 she signed with well-connected dealer Xavier Fourcade who had his feet in both American and European roots, and in 1979 her relationship with the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle ended. During this time, Mitchell would manifest the tumult in her personal life with an outburst of experimentation, creating distinct bodies of work almost yearly. Last October dates from a particularly fertile year, and relates to major paintings such as Weeds, 1976 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden) and Rosebud, 1977 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery). In each, the richly colored, divided strokes culminate in some of the most insistent all-over and passionate paintings of her career.
Mitchell made multi-panel works, in small and large scale, throughout her oeuvre, a practice which escalated at the end of her life. The multi-panel works like Last October can work simultaneous as an overall scene, a combination of distinct works, or a progression of sorts, albeit not one easily discernible. These modest-scaled works are paintings in their own right, not studies for a larger painting and have a personality all their own, spontaneous and daring. In the best of them, like Last October, they show the exuberant confidence of a painter reveling in the medium for its own sake, and at the same time, its palette and title refer to a gorgeous autumnal day, evoking bright light peering through trees.
Joan Mitchell was greatly inspired by her peers-Jackson Pollock's drips, Arshile Gorky's layers, and Mark Rothko's multi-forms-but she was equally moved by Cezanne, Monet, and especially, Van Gogh. Mitchell felt a particular affinity with Vincent van Gogh, whose work would continue as an influence throughout her career. Her deliberate brushwork, which asserts its independence from the thing it depicts, and cadmium yellows, tinged here and there with blue or green, as in Last October have some of their roots in van Gogh. Mitchell takes van Gogh's expressive depiction of natural forces into the realm of pure abstraction, removing the overt subject matter, but retaining the intense passion for the subject. Last October mobilized her artistic will to liberate the constituent elements of painting- line and color, composition and gesture-from their servitude to the fleeting appearances of the material world. In so doing, she makes good on the true promise of van Gogh's practice: to hasten the stirrings of the unfettered spirit (Joan Mitchell, Cheim & Read, New York, 2008).
The mid-late 1970s were an important period in Mitchell's artistic career. In 1974, she had a major retrospective at the Whitney, in 1976 she signed with well-connected dealer Xavier Fourcade who had his feet in both American and European roots, and in 1979 her relationship with the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle ended. During this time, Mitchell would manifest the tumult in her personal life with an outburst of experimentation, creating distinct bodies of work almost yearly. Last October dates from a particularly fertile year, and relates to major paintings such as Weeds, 1976 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden) and Rosebud, 1977 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery). In each, the richly colored, divided strokes culminate in some of the most insistent all-over and passionate paintings of her career.
Mitchell made multi-panel works, in small and large scale, throughout her oeuvre, a practice which escalated at the end of her life. The multi-panel works like Last October can work simultaneous as an overall scene, a combination of distinct works, or a progression of sorts, albeit not one easily discernible. These modest-scaled works are paintings in their own right, not studies for a larger painting and have a personality all their own, spontaneous and daring. In the best of them, like Last October, they show the exuberant confidence of a painter reveling in the medium for its own sake, and at the same time, its palette and title refer to a gorgeous autumnal day, evoking bright light peering through trees.
Joan Mitchell was greatly inspired by her peers-Jackson Pollock's drips, Arshile Gorky's layers, and Mark Rothko's multi-forms-but she was equally moved by Cezanne, Monet, and especially, Van Gogh. Mitchell felt a particular affinity with Vincent van Gogh, whose work would continue as an influence throughout her career. Her deliberate brushwork, which asserts its independence from the thing it depicts, and cadmium yellows, tinged here and there with blue or green, as in Last October have some of their roots in van Gogh. Mitchell takes van Gogh's expressive depiction of natural forces into the realm of pure abstraction, removing the overt subject matter, but retaining the intense passion for the subject. Last October mobilized her artistic will to liberate the constituent elements of painting- line and color, composition and gesture-from their servitude to the fleeting appearances of the material world. In so doing, she makes good on the true promise of van Gogh's practice: to hasten the stirrings of the unfettered spirit (Joan Mitchell, Cheim & Read, New York, 2008).