Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Sunflower III
Joan Mitchell
Etching, 1972
Joan Mitchell is one of the women of the Abstract Expressionist movement, the most well-known American art movement of the 20th century. Belonging to the second wave of abstract expressionists, Mitchell was regarded as one of the five main women of the movement in the early 50’s, which included Perle Fine, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler.
Mitchell, a master colorist and a painter who used the gestural line as a means of expression, based her paintings on remembered objects or scenes of nature, such as flowers or landscapes; she worked from an idea and built upon it. In 1957 Mitchell said that she painted “remembered landscapes which involve my feelings…landscapes that I carry with me.”
Sunflower III is based upon Mitchell’s desire “to make something like the feeling of a dying sunflower”. What is notable to consider is that whereas this work is based on gesture and nature as agent in a constant state of flux (here a dying sunflower), it is the methodology of capturing fluidity of gesture and the idea behind it in a print by the hand of a master printmaker (Arte Adrien Maeght) and multiplying of that print that could be considered to be antithetical to the very nature of the fleeting. The idea and gesture becomes the object itself and it is the object that lives on.
- Sigrid Zahner, Associate Professor, CeramicsLabel Type
Object LabelLabel
"Chicago-born artist Joan Mitchell is recognized as one of the leaders of the second generation of abstract expressionists, influenced by such artists as Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. Her work was included in the major exhibition Artists of the New York School: Second Generation in 1957. Her lyrical abstracts are inspired by nature and are characterized by vibrant color, energetically applied in bold brushstrokes that evoke widely ranging moods and meditative states of mind. Mitchell stated: “l would say that my painting has always been in some way involved with nature and feeling.” Although her works--many suggested by memories of summers in Michigan’s Northern woods or the Chicago lakefront of her childhood-- contain no actual objects, specific forms or realistic images, Mitchell has termed herself a traditionalist because she worked purposely toward a design structure.
After moving to France in 1959, first to Paris and then to a country home in Vétheuil, Mitchell synthesized both French and American concerns and her work has been compared to that of van Gogh and Cezanne."