From Library Journal
This catalog accompanies the first solo exhibition of the paintings of Joan Mitchell (1926-92) in New York City in over 20 years. (The event will be at the Whitney until the end of this month and then will travel to Birmingham, AL, Forth Worth, TX, and Washington, DC.) Though considered a foremost abstract expressionist, Mitchell disliked being affiliated with the movement and especially objected to being viewed as a woman artist. Using Mitchell's journals and correspondence, Livingston (Richard Avedon, etc.) follows the evolution of Mitchell's painting and discusses her technique, which showed more concern with color than with the integrity of the medium. Taking a feminist approach, Linda Nochlin demonstrates that Mitchell's rage at being viewed as a "feminine other" was transformed into a positive energy that brought emotional intensity to her paintings. And Whitney curator Yvette Lee discusses the "Grand Vall e" series of 16 paintings (1983-84) as some of Mitchell's most luminous and lyrical. This book compares well with the first monograph on Mitchell, Judith Bernstock's Joan Mitchell, which also contains high-quality color reproductions and scholarly essays. The Bernstock book, however, focuses more on the artist's paintings in relation to the poetry that she loved. Recommended for all libraries that collect books on art.Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll. Lib., MA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Why wasn't the work of abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell (1926-92) fully appreciated during her lifetime? And what goes on in her magnificently energetic and boldly chromatic compositions, works in which chaos seethes against containment, and feeling runs high? Curator and author Livingston, whose last book illuminated the work of Richard Diebenkorn, seeks answers in her vivid portrait of the artist, whom she describes as an "utterly singular, sometimes over-the-top baroque master of oil paint." She briskly chronicles Mitchell's privileged Chicago childhood, passion for literature, and rapid development as a classically trained and abstractly inclined painter. Independent, volatile, outspoken yet "strangely" inarticulate about her work, Mitchell fled New York's intrusive art world for France, where she painted with undiminished conviction in spite of traumatic losses and serious illness. Curator Yvette Y. Lee focuses on key paintings of Mitchell's, while renowned art historian Linda Nochlin offers an acute study of rage and women's paintings in general, and, in particular, Mitchell's compositions, gorgeously reproduced here in vibrant color, observing that "from their brazen refusal of harmonious resolution rises their blazing glory." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Joan Mitchell was one of the preeminent painters of the Abstract Expressionist episode in American art. During the prime decades of her career, the 1950s through the 1980s, she produced a body of ambitious, lyrical, and often bravura oil paintings which rank with those achieved by her mentors, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. It is the ambition of The Paintings of Joan Mitchell to introduce Mitchell's life and work to a far wider audience than has ever been exposed to her contribution.

Despite several museum exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including a show organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, Mitchell has remained a figure revered primarily in an almost cult-like atmosphere. This mystique was cultivated by artists in New York and Paris and by the poets and writers who were her friends, including Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler. Perhaps the two most important men in Mitchell's life were her first husband, the renowned publisher Barney Rosset, and the powerful French-Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle. These and other relationships influenced her significantly and are explored in this volume.

The Paintings of Joan Mitchell is published on the occasion of a major exhibition of Mitchell's work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, mounted ten years after her death. It is perhaps only now that we are able to tell her story both as an artist and as a brilliant, complex, and sometimes turbulent woman. Many aspects of Mitchell's career that have been virtually unknown to the American audience are revealed here from different perspectives by authors Jane Livingston, Linda Nochlin, and Yvette Y. Lee. These texts, together with many previously unpublished images, offer a riveting narrative and a powerful visual experience.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal