When a dialogue, become an art love story
Sometimes, it's just about a small story between numerous people from the art world. Artists, curators, museum directors and a person who lead everything, in that case the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. So to speak the director of the institution Bernard Arnaud (which is also the director of the luxury group LVMH), and the artistic director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Suzanne Pagé.
It's not the first time, as a curator, that Suzanne Pagé showcase the artworks of Joan Mitchell. In 1982, when she was a curator at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, she made an exhibition of Joan's works titled "Joan Mitchell: Choix de Peintures, 1970-1982". Almost fourteen years later, she came back, with two exhibitions/encounters, the first one being a retrospective of her oeuvre (made in conjunction with two American museums) and an encounter to the main inspiration of Joan's work, Claude Monet.
1. The beginning
This was the reason of my trip to Paris this November, this retrospective, this woman who I saw at the Musée de l'Orangerie in 2020 and which fascinated me since then. When the Fondation announced that they will devote an exhibition dedicated to this French-American artist, I just knew I had to see it.
The show, which was originally conceived by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) was expended by the curatorial team of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, composed of Olivier Michelon and Suzanne Pagé.
The shown, which is presented over an area of 1,000 m2, present 50 works, coming for the United States, and Europe such as the Centre Pompidou, the Musée du Monastère Royal de Brou and the own collection of the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Decade later, between her different sport practice, the artist had her first exhibition at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. A year later, she started her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to study Fine Arts.
After her studies ended in Chicago, she moved to New York in 1947. At that time she started a new degree and decided to visit Paris during the summer of 1948. While returning to the United States after her trip, she decided to focus on full abstraction after her encounter with the American avant-garde composed of Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, who she visited.
She will be recognised in the early 1950s as a fundamental figure for American Abstract Expressionism, and took part of the exhibition "Ninth Street Show".
In May 1955, the artist settled in Paris and she will quote "I think it would be easier to live the life of a painter here - the continual working and not showing for years - it’s accepted and has a dignity,". Thus, she will move everything to Paris, her studio, her love life, her friend, and her galleries, but she will miss the city of New York... Now, she's working in bigger format, sometime with two or three canvases, which was quite uncommon at the time.
A few years later, she will move to her permanent studio in Paris, on Rue Frémicourt. At that time the artist already evolved in her mark making, she shifts from complex and compact composition to her freedom of gesture. She will transform her technique, from oil painting to diluted pigment, oil and bigger format combining the lexicon of American Abstract Expressionism and European Lyrical Abstraction.
In 1967, the artist acquired a large propriety outside of Paris and overlooking the seine in the town of Vétheuil. She settled there permanently in 1968 and worked on numerous landscape and flowers, evoking the works of Vincent van Gogh and the impressionist.
It's at that time that she creates those "fields or territories", which is a group of parting from the early 1970s, which depict the landscape around Vétheuil, captured from an aerial perspective.
During this last decade, the work of Mitchell was full of energy and power, her movement is flawless, her paint are full of texture, experimentation and dialogue between her art and the art of her beloved artist and reference such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, etc.
At her death, the artist was considered to be one of the most influential artists of the abstract expressionist movement in the United States during the first half of the 1950s, by using an intense palette, full of colours, light and reflection on modern masters such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Henri Matisse and Claude Monet.
2. The link
The Joan Mitchell retrospective explores all of the periods of the French-American artist, but the encounter to the late work of Monet is quite breathtaking (the Saint-Louis Art Museum will host the exhibition in March 2023).
This show, bring together and for the first time a selection of "late Monet", painted in Giverny in the latest part of his life and works of Joan Mitchell. To assemble the works of those two pioneers, the curators decided to arrange them thematically: Reflections And Transparencies - "L'heure Des Bleus" - Sensation And Feeling - The Presence Of Poetry - "Water Without Horizon Or Bank" (Monet) - Mitchell, Edrita Fried, Monet, The Agapanthus Triptych, La Grande Vallée, Landscape Up Close.
In Monet's work, reflection, nature and water is deeply important and engraved into his practice. Thus, the creation of his garden in his house and his use of big canvas will lead to a form of abstraction painted in liquid azure, green and brown.
A few decades later, the inspiration of water, sensation and feeling will also determined the practice of the French-American artist. Thus, the landscape of the two artists is clearly different, from a conservative and control one in Monet's house in Giverny and the landscape of a village in Vétheuil. The format of their oeuvre is also quite similar, even more when you compare the canvas of Claude Monet and his Grande Décoration at the Musée de l'Orangerie and the immense polyptych of Mitchell, where she transformed the work into an environment.
Joan Mitchell, Minnesota, 1980. Oil on canvas. 260.4 x 621.7 cm,
3. The "finished/unfinished" aesthetic
At the time of Monet, a picture was defined "finished" if all of the canvas was cover of paint. At the time of the abstract expressionism and the avant-garde, it was quite typical to left the artist choose if they wanted to use the full format of the canvas or not, depending on their technique, they wished and their subject.
Only a few pictures of Monet are evoking this finish/unfinish look which is truly beautiful, in the oeuvre of Monet but also in the understanding of his process.
Thus, the space left in reserve in Monet’s Water Lilies (1917-1919) and Mitchell’s River (1989) enter into a fruitful dialogue where white is used as a primer of the canvas but also as an accent which accented the greens, blues, yellows and mauves of the picture. Both artists use quite vivid and big brushstrokes to translate the movement of the water, the freshness, the small waves, the current, and it's quite fascinating to see it quite close, thinking about their last brushstrokes and move, even more when those works are presented without a glass and a frame.
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The last star of the show might be the famous Agapanthus triptych (1915-1926), which Monet made as one of his Grande Décoration cycle. During 10 years, Claude Monet worked on those three canvases, photographing it and documenting it, thus showing the evolution of his practice.
Almost a decades later, Joan Mitchell is starting one of her biggest project to date, La Grande Vallée. All of them painted between 1983 and 1984 is a testament to her technique, her inspiration and her work. The 21 paintings, including five diptychs and one triptych are characterised by the density of their composition, the all-over effect of the pictural surface, the focus on the abstract motif and the definitive lost of perspective. The artists use colors she's know for, cobalt blue and yellow alongside a multitude of greens, pinks, and purples and new colors such as black and crimson.
Compared to the titled of the triptych of Claude Monet, which referred to the Agapanthus found in the initial compositions (in the lower left-hand corner of the first panel), la Grande Vallée come from a childhood memory of a friend of Mitchell’s, Gisèle Barreau. Barreau described a landscape where she used to go with a cousin who, shortly before his death, had longed to return there... She will depict this scene and say "Painting is the opposite of death, it permits one to survive, it also permits one to live".
4. The conclusion (but not the end)
Monet and Mitchell is a decisive exhibition, and it's not the first one who's being made by the Fondation Louis Vuitton. This powerhouse of artworks (mostly contemporary) and exhibition is always looking for something unknown, overlook or a story to tell who definitely changed the way WE look at art.
Monet and Mitchell is like the poem and the poet who were friends with the two artists, unstoppable, undefinable but also so familiar.
Monet and Mitchell is an endless harmony and resemblances between colors, shapes, brushstrokes, techniques and groundbreaking experimentation which aim to prepare their Grande Décoration: La Grande Vallée and the painting of the Musée de l'Orangerie for Monet.
Monet and Mitchell combine two different kind of painting, coming from different backgrounds of art and two continents, which influenced each other due to a localisation, the fields of Normandie.
Monet and Mitchell will not be here without the rediscovery of the Décoration of Claude Monet by the American modernism, and his late work revived after the critical acclaim in France that the Water Lilies at the Orangerie attracted in 1927.
Both of them shared their love of art, sometime overlooked or not comprehend by the public and the critic, but they stay true to themselves and their art.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Fondation Louis Vuitton
Date: 5.10.2022 – 27.2.2022
Curators: Suzanne Pagé, Marianne Mathieu, Angeline Scherf, Cordelia de Brosses, Claudia Buizza, Katy Siegel, Sarah Roberts & Olivier Michelon.
Ticket: Available on the website of the Fondation Louis Vuitton OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Fondation Louis Vuitton
Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi
Bois de Boulogne
75116 Paris
