Joan Mitchell Exhibit Brings Feeling to David Zwirner Gallery
"To define a feeling: Joan Mitchell, 1960–1965" includes works from both public and private collections, as well as the Joan Mitchell Foundation
Now on view at David Zwirner Gallery in New York are select paintings and works on paper by the famed American artist Joan Mitchell. Titled “To define a feeling: Joan Mitchell, 1960-1965,” the exhibition is inspired by what the artist herself once told said she was searching for in her work. “That particular thing I want can’t be verbalized… I’m trying for something more specific than movies of my everyday life: To define a feeling,” she told ARTnews in 1965.
Curated by Sarah Roberts, the Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, highlights include a triptych titled Untitled (1963), a transitional piece titled Mandres, (c. 1962), and various small-scale paintings inspired by stations on the Paris Metro, all of which were part of Mitchell’s 1965 solo exhibition at New York’s Stable Gallery. Additionally, several large-scale paintings from the collection of the Joan Mitchell Foundation are also on view, along with rarely displayed works on paper made with charcoal and crayon, sometimes combined with watercolor. These creations display Mitchell’s foray into exploring color and form in a different medium.
“With the selection of works for the exhibition, we sought to demonstrate the arc of Mitchell’s work between 1960 and 1965, as she moved from making powerful and mercurial canvases like Mandres, (c. 1962) that experimented radically with the physical properties of oil paint toward a deeper engagement with landscape,” Roberts told Galerie. “Roiling with turbulent deep green, umber, and flashes of cerulean and violet, the drawings and paintings from 1963 and 1964, such as Untitled, 1963 [MoMA] and Untitled, c. 1964 [Joan Mitchell Foundation] drew more directly than any previous works on a particular landscape, specifically the Mediterranean coast as seen while sailing with her then-partner Jean Paul Riopelle.”
“These paintings and drawings are not well-known or studied, and have not been shown in concentration in more than a decade,” she continued. “They demonstrate Mitchell’s lifelong dedication to radical experimentation and to painting in oil, regardless of ever-changing artistic trends. A primary goal of the Joan Mitchell Foundation for this Centennial year has been to expand scholarly and public understanding of Mitchell’s work, and this exhibition advances that purpose by presenting in depth one of her most surprising and commanding bodies of work.”
The exhibit also includes primary materials sourced from the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s archives. Additionally, David Zwirner Books will release a fully illustrated catalogue with new scholarship on this time in Mitchell’s life and career, penned by Roberts and other authors.
“To define a feeling: Joan Mitchell 1960-1965” is on view at David Zwirner Gallery through December 13.