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Joan Mitchell's JOAN MITCHELL’S “WHITE TERRITORY” (1970-1971): NATURE AND PAINTING IN THE EMERGING DIGITAL AGE By Abigail Christine Swaringam Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts In Art History Chair: NNikaika ElElder,der, Ph.DPh.D.. Jordan Amirkhani, Amirkhani Ph.D. Ph D Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences August 14, 2020 Date 2020 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT by Abigail Christine Swaringam 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED JOAN MITCHELL’S “WHITE TERRITORY” (1970-1971): NATURE AND PAINTING IN THE EMERGING DIGITAL AGE BY Abigail Christine Swaringam ABSTRACT In 1968, using an inheritance from her mother, painter Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) bought a property in Vétheuil, France, where she would live for the rest of her life. There, she created vibrant abstract paintings that combined dripping washes and globular brushwork on white backgrounds, but their titles often referenced foliage, land, and territories. One such work, White Territory, painted from 1970 to 1971, layered these two types of brushwork through a time- consuming studio practice. Existing scholarship on Mitchell terms her a “Second Generation Abstract Expressionist” and suggests her work pays homage to the formative movement. Rather than read Mitchell’s White Territory as belated Abstract Expressionism, my thesis examines the painting’s relationship to the historic home in which it was made. From 1878 to 1881, Monet had owned the Vétheuil property that Mitchell bought almost one hundred years later. There, he painted landscapes of Vétheuil’s cathedral, the river Seine, and his lush garden, capturing the appearance of the countryside and its changing weather patterns. Mitchell’s paintings at Vétheuil evacuated mimetic references to the home and the town and, instead, represented the dynamism of nature itself. Through her slow, calculated process of combining and layering different types of brushwork, in works like White Territory, Mitchell depicted nature as a force one encounters rather than a site to behold. Her paintings thus reimagined the idea of landscape and re-asserted the significance of nature and painting in the emerging digital age. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis could not have been possible without the commitment, support, and compassion of my adviser, the faculty of the art history department, my family, and my peers. First, I would like to thank my adviser, Dr. Nika Elder, for her countless hours of support and constructive feedback. She possesses a vigorous, undying creativity when thinking about art and its history that has led me down unexpected, but always exciting paths of research. My thesis would not be possible without her thoughtfulness, dedication, and smart questions. I would also like to extend my thanks to the art history faculty at American University. Special appreciation and gratitude go to Dr. Jordan Amirkhani, Dr. Andrea Pearson, and Dr. Joanne Allen for their words of support, guidance, and feedback during this process. I am grateful for the support and love that my family has shown me during the course of my degree. They have endured countless hours on the phone brainstorming endless possibilities, celebrating success, and consoling tears. Many thanks also go to my supportive and engaged peers. It has been a true pleasure finding a community of like-minded art historians to grow and share this experience with. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 MITCHELL AT VÉTHEUIL: PAINTING NATURE IN- PROGRESS .................................................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER 2 PAINTING NATURE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE DIGITAL AGE ........................................................................................................... 22 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 34 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Joan Mitchell, White Territory, 1970-1971, oil on canvas, 282.9 cm x 223.5 cm (111 3/8 in. x 88 in.), Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1974/2.21………...32 Figure 2: Joan Mitchell, Ladybug, 1957, oil on canvas, 6' 5 7/8" x 9' (197.9 x 274 cm), © Estate of Joan Mitchell, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, 385.1961…………………………32 Figure 3: Joan Mitchell, Student Gouache—Yellow Boats, c. 1942-43, gouache on paper, Estate of Joan Mitchell………………………………………………………………………………….32 Figure 4: Joan Mitchell, City Landscape, 1955, oil on linen, 203.2 × 203.2 cm (80 × 80 in.), © The Estate of Joan Mitchell, Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Society for Contemporary American Art, 1958.193………………………………………………………....32 Figure 5: Joan Mitchell, Vétheuil, 1967-1968, oil on canvas, 77” x 51”, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Greenberg, New York……………………………………………………………32 Figure 6: Claude Monet, Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, oil on canvas, 60.3 × 80.2 cm (23 3/4 × 31 1/2 in.), Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1158...32 Figure 7: Claude Monet, Vétheuil, 1901, oil on canvas, 90.2 × 93.4 cm (35 1/2 × 36 3/4 in.), Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.447………………………………..32 Figure 8: Claude Monet, Vétheuil, 1901, oil on canvas, 90 × 93 cm (36 7/16 × 36 5/8 in.), Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1161……………………………………………..32 Figure 9: Claude Monet, La Débâcle (The Breakup of the Ice), 1880, 61 cm x 100 cm, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Legat Eugen Loeb 1960………………………………………….....32 Figure 10: Detail of White Territory……………………………………………………………..32 Figure 11: Detail of White Territory……………………………………………………………..32 Figure 12: Detail of White Territory……………………………………………………………..32 Figure 13: Detail of White Territory……………………………………………………………..32 Figure 14: Hans Haacke, News, 1969/2008, RSS newsfeed, paper, and printer, dimensions variable, Collection SFMOMA, Purchase through gifts of Helen Crocker Russell, the Crocker Family, and anonymous donors, by exchange, and the Accessions Committee Fund, © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn………………………………………33 Figure 15: Sol Lewitt, Drawing Series 1968 (Fours), 1968……………………………………..33 v INTRODUCTION Although Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) has long been embraced as a post-war American artist, the defining moments in her career took place in France. Her artistic relationship with the country began in 1948. After graduating in 1947 with her B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago, Mitchell won the James Nelson Raymond Foreign Traveling Fellowship from the Art Institute of Chicago, with which she traveled to France for the first time.1 First, she painted in Paris and, later, in Le Lavandou.2 After traveling around France from 1948 to 1949, Mitchell returned to the United States and pursued a full-time painting career in New York. There, she met and became acquainted with artists and critics who would be canonized in the field: Grace Hartigan, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Irving Sandler, Helen Frankenthaler, and Clement Greenberg—to name just a few. Alongside many of them, she became one of the few women to be part of “The Club,” or the mainly homosocial group of artists in New York working under the Abstract Expressionist label.3 Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, she often travelled to back to France to paint and, in 1969, she ultimately moved there, producing much well-known work in her adopted country. Nonetheless, as a woman who painted with visceral brushwork, Mitchell has often been categorized as a “Second Generation Abstract Expressionist.” Critics used the label to refer to younger artists, like Mitchell, who joined the Abstract Expressionists in New York in the later 1 On their website, The Joan Mitchell Foundation lists the scholarship as the James Nelson Raymond Foreign Traveling Fellowship from the Art Institute of Chicago. However, two key book sources on Mitchell list this scholarship as the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling Fellowship. See “Biography & CV,” Joan Mitchell Foundation, accessed June 4, 2020, https://joanmitchellfoundation.org/work/artist/bio; Judith E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1988), 213; Jane Livingston, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell (New York: The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002), 17. 2 Bernstock, 213. 3 Bernstock, 18. 1 half of the 1940’s. While it is true that Mitchell moved to New York after Abstract Expressionism had already began to unfold, using generational terms frames her as derivative of the elder artists and the formative movement. While this is an unfair label for her complex and individualized career, it remains a common art historical term for her and many other painters in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. In his 1997 monograph
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