Ep 17. This ‘Mess’ Made Joan Mitchell Famous

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Can a poem trigger the same visceral reaction as a thunderstorm or sunflowers under a [music] burning sun? With Joan Mitchell, the lines of written poetry and the lines of a landscape horizon were the one and the same. Something sensed before it's understood. In this video, we'll explore some of her most iconic works, especially those shaped by her collaborations with poets, to see how something as structured and quiet as language, could anchor some of the most explosive physical paintings of the 20th century. Let's dive in.

[00:00:43]Hello and welcome to How to Create an icon and make a deeper creative dent.

[00:00:47]This show will get inspired by artists, designers, and creative works that have managed to have a deeper impact and become timeless visual icons. I'm Matt and I'll be your host. Picture this.

[00:00:58]It's 1956 and a young American woman is painting in a studio. We're at 77 R Duare in the artist neighborhood on London Mart in Paris. Or are we in fact in her New York studio at St. Mark's Place? The fact that the internet gives you different accounts as to where she painted her iconic painting Hemllock gives us our first strong clue as to who Joan Mitchell was because the back and forth traveling and working between New York and France ends up being one key to how she paints as we'll see later. But for now, let's look at Hemllock. To experts, this in many ways is a breakthrough painting for her. That's because this painting marks a shift for her and elevates her into a truly respected abstract expressionist painter. Although she never describes herself as this. Instead, she describes her method as controlled contemplation viewed from a distance. But more about her method later in the video.

[00:01:55]Interestingly, this painting was also one of the first where it's actually documented that she used an outside source for inspiration, namely Wen Stevens poem Domination of Black. Now, it's important to know that this poem isn't, as some might think, a direct inspiration or even an illustration of the poem like how Mother Bell arrived at his elegy for the Spanish Republic based much more literally on Rosenberg's poem, A Bird for Every Bird. But instead, Mitchell uses the poem, as she puts it herself, just for mood. Also, interestingly, this poem has been associated with another painting, Blue Knight, by Paul Clay. Clay painted this painting in 1937. And for him it represented immersion in the night as being symbolic of dark mood relating to the rising Nazi movement in Germany at that time. But to Joan Mitchell when she talks about the feeling she got from the poem, it's less of a specific feeling.

[00:02:51]It's more abstract or as she puts it herself, it's just a dark and blue feeling. Can you see it? I feel the choice of colors and composition does it. But what about the energetic brush strokes and gestures? I'm not sure. This might just be me speculating here. But could it be that the part of the poem that contains action and direction turning in the wind, turning as the flames turned into the fire, turning as the tales of the peacocks turned into the loud fire? Can it be that we see that back and forth turning movement in the gestures? When I look at her gestures, I see that uh physicality of her athletic youth and perhaps her figure skating in particular. To me, it looks like her brush is skating across the canvas. Skating, turning, skating, turning, just like the movement in the poem. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Uh how did Jan Mitchell get here? Uh how did she paint with such bold physical gestures loaded with such emotion? Well, let's go back to the beginning. Born in 1925 in Chicago to well-off parents, her mom is a poet and co-editor of poetry magazine. And her dad is a doctor and an amateur painter.

[00:04:08]And even though she had this kind of privileged and so-called cultured upbringing, her dad seems to quite strict and kind of perfectionistic and never really happy with her. Apparently, he wanted a son, and the birth certificate already had the name John written into it, which then quickly had to be changed to Joan. So, I'm not sure as to what degree this influenced young Joan and her interest in sports from an early age. Perhaps she took on a tomboy role just to try to appease her dad. I don't know. But either way, it turns out she was great at all sorts of physical sports and especially that of figure skating, which we referred to earlier.

[00:04:46]And apparently she was so good that she competed in the 1942's US figure skating championships. And it's this uh indication of a physical personality that's something we'll come back to later in her work. The other great influence on her is poetry. And it's easy to assume she gets that from her mom and she was actually published in poetry magazine just age 10. And this poem of hers also gives us another clue to her future paintings. In it, she uses words like blue haze and sun turned stalks and red berries. So, as we can see already at age 10, she's painting with her words. And we can also glimpse of her love of landscapes and nature, I think. And it's this connection between lines of poetry, landscapes, and physical visual art that we'll see again and again in her career. As she grows up, she's painted with her dad and and her interest in art deepens as she gets older, especially u the French postimpressionists that she likes and Matis seems to have been her favorite.

[00:05:48]She studies art at different institutions and then after graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947, she makes a move to New York with Barney Rosset. at this time living in New York but also traveling to Paris and Provence via an art travel grant in 48.

[00:06:05]She paints in a sort of semi-abstract semi-figurative style with hints of cubism. And I think we can see the European postimpressionist and cubist influence quite clearly here. Back in New York, she marries Barney in 49, but they quickly get divorced only 3 years later.

[00:06:23]So it's in 1950 something really exciting happens. something that'll change her life and art forever. She comes face to face with a New York abstract expressionists. The turning point is when she sees William Duning's excavation at the Whitney annual exhibition. Apparently, she was so taken in by what she saw, she decided to go fully abstract painter from then on. She now also becomes friends with several of the New York school painters and like them, she starts to socialize and drink in the Cedar Tavern. Especially France Klene and William Duning become close friends and they are supportive of her work even though not all of the kind of male-dominated New York schools share that same feeling. But apparently it's France Klene and Duning that suggests to Leo Castelli that he should feature Mitchell's art in his ninth street show in 51. So for that show, she paints this cross-section of a bridge and you can see the joy and energy being released having adopted this new free style. Now it has to be understood at this time for a female artist competing in a very male-dominated art market would have been very difficult. the abstract expressionist in New York this at this time. Um, it was quite a boy club, hard drinking, hard living, and it wouldn't have been easy for Joan to be accepted by some of them. But from what I've read, she could be just as intense and unapologetically tough and hardrinking as some of them. And over time, she would find acceptance and even respect within that group. And you can see why, aside from her personality, when you look at her painting and how her painting style matched the physical and vigorous style of the most intense of the Abeck's painters. So apparently this large painting is accepted by the Ninth Street show. And there's a famous story that she had to carry this huge camber on her own through the streets of Manhattan to the exhibition. And I think we can agree this demonstrates her determination. The story also has another version where Leo Castelli actually helps her to carry it. No one seems to know for sure. Either way, and much more importantly, her painting is a hit at the exhibition and it just sets her off on her abstract career. Even though she'd hate me calling her that, she herself didn't want to be pigeon to hold and she even said abstract is not a style I simply want to make a surface work. So, for the next 5 years, she does pretty well. But after a while, it's as if a bit of that initial burst of excitement, of abstraction has left her a bit sort of directionless. Experts say that her work at this time is mostly a repetition of the chaotic energy of random instinct, which would be then the automatism we've talked about in previous videos. And this makes sense to me. On this channel, I often talk about the advantage of working within a set of constraints. Because when you work without constraints for long enough, your instincts can start to repeat themselves. Experts have said her gestures were still expressive, but they began to echo the same movements and the same emotional patterns just rearrange.

[00:09:35]It still looked free, but the surprise was gone. And this is why if we return to Hemlock, it makes 1956 such a turning point for her. For the first time, her abstract art isn't just randomness, but an actual emotional interpretation of a landscape and the rhythmic almost athletic, as we said before, expression of the written word. The mood of the poem have somehow anchored the randomness and made her work more focused. Mitchell's method has been said to be total absorption, where she'd observe her canvas in deep contemplations from far away. 23 feet has been mentioned. I'm not sure why it's so exact um but still from quite far away in any case. And then she would sometimes call this way of painting her stop, look and listen method. But then suddenly she would then rush forward and almost attacked the canvas with burst of intense sometimes violent energy. And she'd use anything uh from large household painting brushes to small fine painting brushes. She'd use rags and and even even her hands. And it's this start and stop and start way of painting that would then explain how she managed to balance her passionate emotional expression with the structural and lyrical control that she's known for.

[00:10:55]It's as if she paints like a poem uses stances. Start stop.

[00:11:02]This method then gave her what she called herself her controlled freedom. A couple of years later, she paints the bridge, developing further her colors against white. This painting may or may not have been related to a piece of writing by Hart Crane, but no one seems to know for sure. Now, let's jump uh a few years ahead and to my next example.

[00:11:23]This is Crow Hill from 1966. And once again, we know for a fact that this one is inspired by a poem. This time, it's a poem by Frank O'Hara. Now, Frank was a good friend of hers. And again, it's not a direct interpretation, but rather inspiration of a mood. 1966 had been a very tough year for Joan, and it's the year where both her mom and later actually Frank O'Hara himself die. So, there's a lot of emotion going on in this painting. Ohara's poem contained the foroding line and possibly escape into the sky. So, is this what the feeling is? foroding, personal loss, and emotional turmoil. But once again, even though the inspiration come from a poem, she isn't literally painting the poem.

[00:12:11]Instead, as experts say, she is responding to how it moves. There's no rigid meter or rhyme scheme, but there is rhythm. She isn't translating the imagery directly, so you won't find a literal image of Crow Hill depicted on the canvas. Instead, she paints the movement of the poem, the way it drifts, interrupts itself, and changes emotional tone midway. Or as experts say, when O'Hara writes in jumps and fragments, Mitchell paints in bursts and interruptions. When the poem shifts between observation and feeling, the painting shifts between dense and open space. When the language feels spontaneous but intentional, the brush work mirrors that balance. So, like we said, a connection isn't visual. It's structural and rhythmic. Start, stop, start, stop. By now, Mitchell's been living fairly permanently in Paris since 1959. And it's interesting to see how during the 1960s, her art has managed to stay abstract. I think being away from the total dominance of pop art during the same time in New York. In a way, it's like Saittombbley who had his exile in Italy. It's as if by living in Europe, pop art just seems to have passed them by. Interestingly with Jones specifically is that her work now, well to me at least, uh feel like a mix between the colors of European art like Matis and Monet, but still have that sense of freedom of American abstraction. But let's move on. Since the late 50s, Mitchell has collaborated with a number of poets on smaller scale art book projects. This is poems by Mitchell and John Ashbury from from this time. But if we fast forward to 1970s, we see how this collaboration idea has developed. And so this is a 1975 collaboration often referred to as poem pastels. In it, we find daylight which he created with James Schuler. Michelle contributes these vibrant pastel drawings while Sheila and other poets provide text that were printed alongside sort of in a dialogue with the images.

[00:14:16]This and other similar projects still show us her interest in blurring emotion and sensory experiences between painting and language. And these collaborations are ongoing. As late as 1989, she creates smoke together with uh Charles Hine. Now, personally, I think that Joan Mitchell got better with age. Not all agree, and that's fine, but for me, her absolute best years are 1979 to roughly 1985. My favorites are Salute Tom, Minnesota, Faded Air One, and the one we'll cover next, Lie on Rose. Now, I chose this artwork next not just because I like it so much, but because it has a relationship with the written word. Um, not a poem, granted, but instead the famous song lyric by Edith PF. Again, the painting is not a literal interpretation. Here is the feeling of being in love and how the tint of love colors life into this beautiful hue.

[00:15:12]Especially during this time in the in the 70s and 80s, we can really see, I think, how bright and energetic her colors have become. Her technique was also known to be a process of layering from translucent washes to thick imped textures, allowing the lower layers to interact with the top layers. And I think we can see that in this monumental work. Almost 7 m long and 3 m high. It's huge. According to Mitchell herself, the song and its title had special uh meaning to her because her relationship with Canadian painter Jean Paul Riapel.

[00:15:46]His nickname for her was Rosa Maler.

[00:15:49]Apparently, she painted it right after the breakup with Jean Paul. And there was a relationship that had lasted over 20 years. But it's not just the colors and the title. As always, we can see the rhythm perhaps of the words, perhaps of the music. But once again, we also see that Joan Mitchell landscape, a landscape created in her start, stop start stop manner. But once again, as always with Mitchell, is not a literal description of the landscape, but the emotional echo of a landscape recalled and remembered. and perhaps in this case a landscape of long lost love which then connects us to one of her most famous quotes. I carry my landscapes around with me. Now I was going to stop here but I have to cover one more of her in my opinion best paintings. Faded air one from 1985. Even though it's not known to be related to a specific work of poetry, I just had to include it. This painting represents profound sadness for her because a year before she's had a cancer diagnosis and several of her best friends are starting to die from AIDS at this point. And that might be why we can see a breakaway from the previous rhythmical harmony. It's much less start stop start stop here, but instead intense swirling fury with much darker colors mixed in. Despair and sadness.

[00:17:14]But is it just me or in the mix of that intense despair, isn't there a bit of sunshine we see on the horizon and the swirling brush strokes that starts at confusion, anxiety, if we follow them for long enough, perhaps in the end they're the beautiful shapes of a talented figure skater ready to complete the circle of life.

[00:17:37]So in summary, what makes Joan Mitchell's best work so iconic? Well, officially it's of course her ability to translate the written word to emotional imagery, but for me personally, it's something more than that. And even though her work is most often connected to the Abex movement, some degree Matis and in her later work to Monet and other French painters and I can see all of this being true. But for me on a personal level, my love of a work is similar to my reaction to Saittombli's work. Meaning it's not always instantly accessible. But once you really start looking, her work contains so much so much good stuff. Simply put, I'm drawn to it. I don't always understand it, but I don't care. Like the best poetry is not always designed to tell a story.

[00:18:25]It's designed to make you feel. And wow, does she ever. And to me, that's what she does. She makes you feel. And that's why she's so iconic to me. So, where do you get your inspiration for your creative work? Right now, it's easier than ever to create without limits. You can make anything, anytime, with almost no restriction. But that sense of freedom can also lead you into repetition of what you already know, like it did for Joan in the early 50s.

[00:18:53]Her breakthrough came from stepping outside her medium and borrowing a structure that didn't belong to her. As I often say on this channel, to maximize creativity, try working inside of set of parameters and limitations. Some people I know resist this seemingly contradictory exercise, but that's because I believe they haven't experienced the power of it yet. Joan Mitchell proves that it's true. So, like Joan, could you experiment by searching for a mood or a feeling or even just the rhythm of someone else's written work or music or whatever else you can find and then express one of your memories and stories through that emotion or in that rhythm. Try it and see if it ends up making your creative deep dent in the universe just like it did for Joan Mitchell. If you found this video inspiring, please share, like, and subscribe. If you do, I'll make more videos like this that hopefully will make you become a more inspired artist or creative. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next one.