But eventually and understandably, she grew tired of being bombarded with lazy comparisons to a canonical male artist. Mitchell was born in Chicago and active in the New York AbEx movement in the 1950s, but after that, she worked as an expatriate in France for more than 30 years, arguably following in Monet’s footsteps, joining him posthumously in his garden.
© Estate of Joan MitchellĮarly on, Mitchell claimed a debt to Monet. This is an elegantly pared-down version of an exhibition that premiered at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris last fall, where some 60 canvases portrayed their shared immersive and intuitive approaches to landscape.
“Monet/Mitchell” ought to be in the curatorial handbook of how to make an argument with objects: their shared sensibility is wholly irrefutable the minute you enter the galleries, and its significance deepens the closer you look, the more you read. The connection is so strong, in fact, that in this show, guessing which paintings were made by whom is not as easy as you’d think. In the catalogue, curator Simon Kelly notes that Monet’s late work had a profound impact on Abstract Expressionism more broadly, prompting painter and critic Elaine de Kooning to coin the term “Abstract Impressionism.” The AbEx movement took off across the pond a couple decades after Monet’s death, and it’s clear that Monet charted some kind of path for the movement. The show highlights the rhymes between his work and that of the American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell (1925–1992), focusing specifically on works both artists made in the gardens of Vétheuil, in northern France.
I mean both his literal and artistic vision-these were inextricable for the plein air painter. Louis Art Museum through June 25, the enduring impact of Monet’s vision hits hard.
In “Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape,” on view at the St. © Musee Marmottan Monet, Academie des beaux-arts, Paris Claude Monet: The Japanese Bridge at Giverny, 1918-24.
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