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Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter (2011)

by Patricia Albers(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0375414371 (ISBN13: 9780375414374)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Knopf

review 1: I'm surprised that I liked this book. Really. The author ticked me off at times with her use of "big" words - like "antipodes" for example. I felt like she was showing off her vocabulary for her own sake. And she loaded paragraphs with names, one after the other, names. Of course, lots of them were artists that were well known though there were others that seemed so part of the art movement of the time, yet I'd never heard of them. And then there were the people I'd heard of, the well known artists and gallery owners, AND my drawing instructor and his wife, and the artist we'd met in Paris one year while staying at the Cite International des Arts. Whoa! There were the parts in Chicago, where I grew up, the locations were familiar, and there was New York,and parts of France... more. So I got hooked. I couldn't put this book down. I wanted to but kept being drawn to it. I don't know how the author did it, but certainly she did a lot of research, to give us the conversations, the living situations, the troubles. When I was a student, studying painting, I desperately looked for women painters (or as Joan called them Lady Painters. My friends and I wanted role models. There weren't many, and after reading this book, I'm glad that I didn't look to Joan as a role model for my life! But oh do I love her paintings. I could look at them for hours. So if you have an interest in painting, in biographies, in abstract expresionism, in the life of an artist, in Joan Mitchell, this is the book for you.
review 2: I wish Patricia Albers could write as well as Mitchell could paint. It's frustrating to read descriptions of breakthrough or outstanding paints without an image to reference; this volume should have had many more images of Mitchell's work, as where she was and who she was with had so much influence on what she painted. Albers' fact-checking is sloppy; for example,Mitchell was in the 1989 Whitney Biennial; there was no Biennial in 1990, as stated in the book. There is a lot of speculation and discussion of Mitchell's possible synesthesia, which is dropped as a theme later in the book when the author starts trying to discuss her life and it's impact on her art. After all Albers' talk of synesthesia, she doesn't seem able to link this up with how Mitchell saw the world and interpreted through her art. In fact, the author doesn't seem up to the task of writing critically about Mitchell's painting at all. She relies on cliche and fawning praise. On the good side, the author gives us an interesting account of a brilliant, ambitious artist who destroyed herself through alcoholism and terrible life choices, both professionally and personally. She was a fascinating individual and this comes through the pages, however hard it can sometimes be to read this book. less

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