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Lot Essay
‘The freely rolling blues and reflective yellow of River II of 1986 seem more restorative than not. The river’s flow, so long a metaphor for the human circulatory system, gives life as well to painting, and vice versa’ (K. Kertess, Joan Mitchell, New York 1997, p. 38).
Ebullient streams of paint conjure a panorama of light and movement in Joan Mitchell’s magnificent diptych River II. Created in 1986, the work hails from the final decade of the artist’s life, widely recognised as one of her most refined and self-assured creative periods. Combining a visionary love of nature and landscape with a painterly idiom rooted in Abstract Expressionism, Mitchell returned to the river as subject matter throughout her career, drawing inspiration from the glittering stretch of the Seine that graced the view from her home in Vétheuil. It was the same vista that had once inspired Claude Monet, who had lived on the site, and whose influence is palpable in the present work. Drawing together his legacy in European post-impressionism with the gestural exuberance of her own Abstract Expressionist roots, Mitchell’s idiom reached something of an apotheosis during the 1980s. Having been hospitalised for major surgery in 1985, Mitchell began to regain her physical strength, and returned to painting with a renewed sense of energy and commitment. River II, sprawling over two magisterial canvases, bears witness to this rejuvenation. As Klaus Kertess writes, ‘the freely rolling blues and reflective yellow of River II of 1986 seem more restorative than not. The river’s flow, so long a metaphor for the human circulatory system, gives life as well to painting, and vice versa’ (K. Kertess, Joan Mitchell, New York 1997, p. 38).
Coming to prominence as a leading artist of the 1950s New York School, Mitchell distinguished herself from her contemporaries through her unwavering devotion to natural landscape. Her paintings, bold and vivid in their execution, never seek to emulate their subject matter, but rather to capture its emotive aura. ‘I would rather leave nature to itself. It is quite beautiful enough as it is’, Mitchell explains. ‘I certainly never mirror it. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with’ (J. Mitchell, quoted in M. Tucker, Joan Mitchell, New York 1974, p. 6). In this respect, her work is frequently compared to that of Vincent van Gogh, an artist who, along with Paul Cézanne, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky and Philip Guston, represents one of Mitchell’s most important influences. Indeed, the painterly surface of River II expresses, with every brushstroke, the powerful dynamics of free-flowing water, submerging the viewer in its glistening torrents and rivulets. Having grown up overlooking the dramatic splendour of Lake Michigan, water was undoubtedly one of Mitchell’s most prominent themes, and its lyrical abstraction in the present work is certainly among the artist’s most sophisticated tributes.
Mitchell first moved to France in the late 1940s, but it was not until 1968 that she relocated to the idyllic two-acre estate at Vétheuil. The artist was enamoured by the space, light and seclusion afforded by this bucolic setting. As Mitchell’s biographer Patricia Albers describes, ‘nearly every window … commanded a dazzling view: between the river and the road below lay a wonderfully unmanicured wet-grass field dotted with locusts, pines, pear trees, willows, ginkgos, and sycamores. Balls of golden mistletoe hung in the trees, their roundness contrasting with the dark rectangularity of a rigorously pruned hedge. Everything moved. Birds twittered and swooped. Wind ruffled the foliage. Church bells rang. Passing blue back and rust barges, laundry flapping on their decks, roiled the Seine, a meandering ribbon of light’ (P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, New York 2011, p. 313). It was in this rural sanctuary that Mitchell was able to find peace and solace from the various tragic circumstances that marked the final decade of her life: the death of her sister, two major operations and her cancer diagnosis of 1984. Whilst the smaller-scale River paintings from this period have been interpreted in terms of the physical and psychological challenges faced by Mitchell, the present work, with its expansive scale and luminous palette, can be understood as a eulogy to the landscape that continued to nurture and inspire her. Executed with vibrant intensity, the work conveys Mitchell’s conviction that ‘painting is the opposite of death, it permits one to survive, it also permits one to live’ (J. Mitchell, quoted in Joan Mitchell: Choix de peintures 1970-1982, exh. cat., Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 1982, unpaged).
Within an oeuvre defend by its devoted engagement with painterly abstraction, the works from the latter period of Mitchell’s career can be said to constitute a distillation of a lifetime of dedicated technical exploration, achieving new levels of formal grandeur and poise. In River II, Mitchell relinquishes the allover surface textures favoured in certain earlier strands of her output, giving way to an exquisite tonal dialogue between the white of the canvas and the streaks of colour that adorn it. The effect is one of sublimation, immersing the viewer in a kind of hyper-reality in which we almost feel the river’s currents surging past us. Albers pays tribute to Mitchell’s unique ability to create multi-sensory experience through her work, explaining how ‘Joan’s synesthesia and eidetic memory, I came to realize, left their tracks all over her art. … the consummate painter, Joan used all of her craft plus every scrap of evidence at her disposal, including the perceptual “otherness” that helped her to swing open a window between the narrow crack of everyday awareness and create art of a rare incandescence’ (P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, New York 2011, p. 313).
Ebullient streams of paint conjure a panorama of light and movement in Joan Mitchell’s magnificent diptych River II. Created in 1986, the work hails from the final decade of the artist’s life, widely recognised as one of her most refined and self-assured creative periods. Combining a visionary love of nature and landscape with a painterly idiom rooted in Abstract Expressionism, Mitchell returned to the river as subject matter throughout her career, drawing inspiration from the glittering stretch of the Seine that graced the view from her home in Vétheuil. It was the same vista that had once inspired Claude Monet, who had lived on the site, and whose influence is palpable in the present work. Drawing together his legacy in European post-impressionism with the gestural exuberance of her own Abstract Expressionist roots, Mitchell’s idiom reached something of an apotheosis during the 1980s. Having been hospitalised for major surgery in 1985, Mitchell began to regain her physical strength, and returned to painting with a renewed sense of energy and commitment. River II, sprawling over two magisterial canvases, bears witness to this rejuvenation. As Klaus Kertess writes, ‘the freely rolling blues and reflective yellow of River II of 1986 seem more restorative than not. The river’s flow, so long a metaphor for the human circulatory system, gives life as well to painting, and vice versa’ (K. Kertess, Joan Mitchell, New York 1997, p. 38).
Coming to prominence as a leading artist of the 1950s New York School, Mitchell distinguished herself from her contemporaries through her unwavering devotion to natural landscape. Her paintings, bold and vivid in their execution, never seek to emulate their subject matter, but rather to capture its emotive aura. ‘I would rather leave nature to itself. It is quite beautiful enough as it is’, Mitchell explains. ‘I certainly never mirror it. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with’ (J. Mitchell, quoted in M. Tucker, Joan Mitchell, New York 1974, p. 6). In this respect, her work is frequently compared to that of Vincent van Gogh, an artist who, along with Paul Cézanne, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky and Philip Guston, represents one of Mitchell’s most important influences. Indeed, the painterly surface of River II expresses, with every brushstroke, the powerful dynamics of free-flowing water, submerging the viewer in its glistening torrents and rivulets. Having grown up overlooking the dramatic splendour of Lake Michigan, water was undoubtedly one of Mitchell’s most prominent themes, and its lyrical abstraction in the present work is certainly among the artist’s most sophisticated tributes.
Mitchell first moved to France in the late 1940s, but it was not until 1968 that she relocated to the idyllic two-acre estate at Vétheuil. The artist was enamoured by the space, light and seclusion afforded by this bucolic setting. As Mitchell’s biographer Patricia Albers describes, ‘nearly every window … commanded a dazzling view: between the river and the road below lay a wonderfully unmanicured wet-grass field dotted with locusts, pines, pear trees, willows, ginkgos, and sycamores. Balls of golden mistletoe hung in the trees, their roundness contrasting with the dark rectangularity of a rigorously pruned hedge. Everything moved. Birds twittered and swooped. Wind ruffled the foliage. Church bells rang. Passing blue back and rust barges, laundry flapping on their decks, roiled the Seine, a meandering ribbon of light’ (P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, New York 2011, p. 313). It was in this rural sanctuary that Mitchell was able to find peace and solace from the various tragic circumstances that marked the final decade of her life: the death of her sister, two major operations and her cancer diagnosis of 1984. Whilst the smaller-scale River paintings from this period have been interpreted in terms of the physical and psychological challenges faced by Mitchell, the present work, with its expansive scale and luminous palette, can be understood as a eulogy to the landscape that continued to nurture and inspire her. Executed with vibrant intensity, the work conveys Mitchell’s conviction that ‘painting is the opposite of death, it permits one to survive, it also permits one to live’ (J. Mitchell, quoted in Joan Mitchell: Choix de peintures 1970-1982, exh. cat., Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 1982, unpaged).
Within an oeuvre defend by its devoted engagement with painterly abstraction, the works from the latter period of Mitchell’s career can be said to constitute a distillation of a lifetime of dedicated technical exploration, achieving new levels of formal grandeur and poise. In River II, Mitchell relinquishes the allover surface textures favoured in certain earlier strands of her output, giving way to an exquisite tonal dialogue between the white of the canvas and the streaks of colour that adorn it. The effect is one of sublimation, immersing the viewer in a kind of hyper-reality in which we almost feel the river’s currents surging past us. Albers pays tribute to Mitchell’s unique ability to create multi-sensory experience through her work, explaining how ‘Joan’s synesthesia and eidetic memory, I came to realize, left their tracks all over her art. … the consummate painter, Joan used all of her craft plus every scrap of evidence at her disposal, including the perceptual “otherness” that helped her to swing open a window between the narrow crack of everyday awareness and create art of a rare incandescence’ (P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, New York 2011, p. 313).