Joan Mitchell: Likeness

“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

Life , Women , Men , Way

“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

Hate , People , Pleasure , Dogs

“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

World , Color , Thinking , Light

“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

Love , Art , Painting , Forgetting

“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

Love , Color , Idea , Thinking

“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

Women , Books , School , Beauty

“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

Feeling

“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

Feeling