Joan Mitchell Quotes (17 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Joan Mitchell: 17 quotes 5 likes

Famous Joan Mitchell Quotes

“I'm trying to remember what I felt about a certain cypress tree and I feel if I remember it, it will last me quite a long life.”

Joan Mitchell

In 'Art News', April 1965, p. 63; as quoted in in The Paintings of Joan Mitchel, ed. Jane Livingstone, Joan Mitchell, Linda Nochlin, p. 26
1950 - 1975

“I started in, got it [former Monet's house, where he lived 1878 - 1881 in Vetheuil; [Mitchell bought the house and used it mainly first in the weekends] in summer of 67, Yeah, well, and then I started... I was still painting at Fremicourt and I remember starting the 'Sunflowers' [series, c. 1969-72], which I saw in Vetheuil and painted them in Fremicourt, you see... The thing about [the studio in] Fremicourt, also about St. Marks: I had to roll [large] paintings to get them out, which was a real drag, because of thickness [of the paint which cracked]. And when I started painting in Vetheuil, you can just take the [stretched] paintings out [in open air]. Well, that really changed unconsciously an awful lot of... Walk them out stretched, it's great.”

Joan Mitchell

second side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“I've have tried to take from everybody [every artist in American Abstract Expressionism ]... I can't close my eyes or limit my experiences... Because I live now, I am more interested in art now. It's different as any art is different from period to period. But it's no better or worse.”

Joan Mitchell

Quote in 'Art News', September 1958, p. 41; as cited in The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 69
1950 - 1975

“And then the spring of [19]'48 I toddled off to Paris on a Liberty ship... Yes, and arriving in Le Havre on that Liberty ship and seeing all those—the sun was coming up—and seeing all those ships sunk.. It was hardly... I mean, war, war, war, war…. I went to Paris, and I stayed with Zuka and Louis [Mitelberg] [her husband then, the cartoonist 'Tim']. And I looked for a place—and found it on Rue Gallande. Across the river was Notre Dame. That was all of four dollars a month, with a hole on the stairs as a toilet and a spigot with cold water and one light-bulb. That was all the electricity there was. But this view, I mean, God!... Saint Julien le Pauvre [Greek Orthodox Church, oldest in Paris] was right in front of me. And so I painted there.”

Joan Mitchell

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“[Mitchell wanted in her painting].. the feeling in a line of poetry which makes it different from, a line of prose... Sentimentality is self-pity, your own swamp. Weeping in your own beer is not a feeling. It lacks dignity and hasn't an outside reference.”

Joan Mitchell

Quote of Joan Mitchell from an interview with Irving Sandler (c. 1956); as cited in Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter, by Patricia Albers, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 3 may 2011, p. 244
1950 - 1975

“I'm not so sure I could have done otherwise, but I wish I... I'm re-going to a French shrink now, and she's helped me a lot. I wish I'd gone sooner, because I think women are inclined more than men to be self-destructive, and I really think I had the masochistic medal there for a while, and I, you know, I want to, that I wish I had stopped. I think it's also very masochistic to sit and cry in my spilt Scotch for areas in my life that have been very creepy and that I should have cut, left sooner. So what's, that's, I feel sorry about that. But I'm getting to [me, be] perhaps more, oh, I don't know, trying to look at that in a more positive way. Maybe I got something out of that too, I don't know... Maybe. I mean... I feel also uncomfortable about staying in France, but then, if I could only make sort of a.., instead of saying negative, 'I'm too lazy to move,' a positive thing, 'I really like this house. I really like this view. I really like Paris better than New York”

Joan Mitchell

or not better, or equally, or differently, or something, which is quite true - instead of sitting - which I can do, I used to do - and missing the country and missing New York, or missing France.
Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with white. Either you see it or you don't. [George] de la Tour doesn't have light; Monet hasn't any light. Matisse, Goya, Chardin, Van Gogh, Sam Francis, Kline have it. But it has nothing to do with being the best painter at all.”

Joan Mitchell

Quote of Mitchel in Marcia Tucker's Whitney catalogue (1974); as cited in Jane Livingstone‘ in The Paintings of Joan Mitchel, ed. Jane Livingstone, Joan Mitchell, Linda Nochlin, p. 35
1975 - 1992

“And I came [to New York, 1945]... It was just after the war and I thought it was a little early to get over there [to Europe]. So I spent the winter under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side, living with Barney Rosset, and I came here [to New York] to study with Hofmann... And I went to Hofmann's class and I couldn't understand a word he said so I left, terrified. But he and I became friends later on. Friends, but I never studied with him..”

Joan Mitchell

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“Pop Art, Op Art, Flop Art and Slop Art... I fall into the last two categories [her remark, in the mid 1970’s].”

Joan Mitchell

Quote of Joan Mitchell, in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 78
1975 - 1992

Joan Mitchell Quotes about painting

“And the first studio I went to [in New York, c. 1950]... I was trying to find de Kooning because he had a painting at the Whitney, which was in the old Studio School [Eighth Street], you know... And I thought I would like to know him. I really dug his painting, and I dug Gorky's painting... But the first studio I went into was Franz Kline... and there were all these Klines, unstretched, hanging on the brick walls. Beautiful. You know, with the telephone book drawings all over the floor, and Kline yakking away, and it was just, I was out of my mind! And so from then on I got involved in the Artists Club. They allowed very few women in, and I was included for $35 a year. And I got very involved in the Cedar Bar and the whole thing..”

Joan Mitchell

second side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“I might get an idea [for the start of a painting] sitting looking at the river, or something, or a specific.... Yeess. I'm sure, yes, I'm sure it [the environment] influences me in terms of green and gray and color and... I mean, New York light is so different, and it always hits me when I come here [in New York], and it excites me to see great extremes of dark and light and no nuance - which I love. But there the Isle de France [round about Paris] has that, you know, filtered light that is that.. where even on a gray day, the green is very green, and the red is very red.... I think walking out barefoot and moving the paintings, being able to move them out of my studio [in Vetheuil] for transportation, things like that have had [influence]... As well as the landscape. Lake Michigan was pretty important, you know.”

Joan Mitchell

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“Well, I once wrote in - it's in Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture, as I remember, Irving Sandler, a long time ago, that I hated the word 'Nature' with a capital 'N.'... But now I accept it, I suppose. I mean, I really like trees and flowers and dogs and all that much more than.... a lot of other people [do]... You know, I really do get pleasure out of... Great pleasure. Out of just looking at... But I have fun here [New York] too, you know.”

Joan Mitchell

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“I've always been told that I was a painter's painter... What does that mean?... That painters like my painting and the big wide world overlooks it, I suppose?... Well, I know... To me, it would have meant that - this is pre this new rage in buying and selling paintings - that, I think, that the formal values, like light, space, color, all those things that a painting is made up of, as well as the Jacob going up the ladder or Venus on the half shell or something [chuckles] would be what interested the painter. And perhaps the public would want the picture of the Christ child, so to speak. You know what I mean.”

Joan Mitchell

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“Oh, early Kandinsky.. [stuck her early]. Well no, they had that at the Art Institute in Chicago, don't forget. See, everybody, to do 'modern art' then [New York, mid-forties], seemed to me, when you were going 'modern' [both chuckle], it was Picasso. I mean, everybody. But I avoided that like the plague. I thought... I loved Picasso, but it just wasn't for me... Well, I don't! I have some of those [early] paintings from LeLavandou - they're in storage - and from Mexico. They were Expressionist landscapes, or boats on the beach or something like that, which I still do. Sort of going abstract, going towards..”

Joan Mitchell

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

Joan Mitchell Quotes about feelings

“When I came back [from a temporary stay in Paris] and heard you play with Charles Mingus, and when you and Cecil Taylor [also a free Jazz musician] opened up the 'Five Spot' in the Fall of 1956, I felt better about being in New York. All the musicians who create from the gut as well as their intellect can change things. People will never understand what we are doing if they can't feel... All art is abstract. All music is abstract. But it's all real... When you improvise, I can see the seeds of a symphony you could write. When I first heard Charlie Parker in Chicago, I could see he was a symphony.... we were all trying to bring that spirit, that spontaneous energy, into our work.”

Joan Mitchell

talking to jazz-player David Anram in the jazz club the 'Five Spot', in 1956, she was visiting with Franz Kline
Quoted by David Anram in 'Introduction', in The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, ed. David Acton, David Amram, David Lehman, Worcester Art Museum, 2001 p. 21
1950 - 1975

“I'm not religious or anything like that. [But] a little more spiritual something or other… A little more 'feeling'. And there's my word again. You know?… And I find that…. [pauses], I find that uninspiring, and if I hung around too much I might find it very deadly. If I let it enter my studio. And it would be hard not to have it enter.”

Joan Mitchell

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

“I'm not religious or anything like that. [But] a little more spiritual something or other.. .A little more 'feeling.'”

Joan Mitchell

And there's my word again. You know?.. .And I find that.. ..[pauses], I find that uninspiring, and if I hung around too much I might find it very deadly. If I let it enter my studio. And it would be hard not to have it enter.
Tape number two, side A
1980s, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986