There is no quiet in this town. No quiet in this house. No quiet in my head. There must be a solution, a way to silence this noise. I would move to the county if I could. Almost daily I daydream about waking up to the sound of nothing. No trucks. No cars. No crowds of humans walking by. No cell phones. The only sound I want to hear is an unplugged one.
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| Joan Mitchell (1925 - 1992) UNTITLED 1957, Oil on canvas, 80 x 57 inches |
Fall is here and for the first time in four years, I am not taking a class at Temple University. Simply put, I finally graduated. However, I still have library privileges, something I plan to abuse as long as I stay in Philly. Campus was mad today. Had to pay $14 for parking. Was pissed about that, but then I quickly celebrated the fact that I am no longer committed to commuting to campus. I traded in thirty pounds of books and left with forty. I rid myself of the books with words that I used to write my master’s paper. I wanted large picture books. I am teaching a small class of adults to paint in acrylics so I grabbed books on Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Hans Hofmann. Then another tome caught my eye, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. The book was brand new, 2011, wrapped in a calm ultramarine blue cover. I would be the first reader. I got goosebumps.
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| Lee Bontecou (b. 1931) UNTITLED 1962, Welded steel, epoxy, canvas, fabric, saw blade, and wire, 68 x 72 x 30 inches |
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The day I truly discovered Joan Mitchell was September 21st, 2008. I say truly, because I am sure I knew her name from passing but I had never seen her work in person. Although I see many paintings in books, the experience of seeing a painting in person is a decisive moment. Cezanne and Matisse amaze me in books, but in person, I feel less. Van Gogh is okay in books but in person, he rocks. Painting is textural. It is not illustration. It is not print. It is not meant to be experienced on a computer screen. Painting is visceral. Painting is blood and guts. I was in New York City at the Jewish Museum wandering the exhibit, Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 (NYTimes Photos). Joan Mitchell is no exception when it comes to mansize paintings. I stood immobilized between her aggressive brushstrokes from 1957 and Lee Bontecou’s 1962 sewn metal sculpture. They faced each other and I stood between them, feeling, "This is it. These are my ladies."
A few pages into my new book, I felt assured of my selection:
Having come of age as an artist on New York’s Tenth Street in the 1950s and reveled in its marvelous “community of feeling,” Joan Mitchell has been written into the mythology of Abstract Expressionism. She knocked back beers with the boys at the Cedar Tavern, caroused in the Hamptons, hung out with hip cats at the Five Spot, and felt the pain and thrill of belonging, or nearly, to the little band of rebels operating below Fourteenth Street … Yet, despite her personal and artistic self-identification with Abstract Expressionism, Joan’s art confounds textbook classification. It has to do, she said, with memories of her feelings – feelings about “love and death and all that crap” – ensnared in lakes, trees, rivers, clouds, sunflowers, bridges and so on.
I was like, “Oh crap, that is what I do,” and then I laughed because Joan said crap.
