Blackpaint 22

Joan Mitchell

No time to write much today, so I’ve decided to upload paintings by two of my favourite artists.  the first is joan Mitchell, who like all women artists, in the last century anyway, seems to have been passed over as far as critical acclaim goes.  Maybe because she went to live in France; maybe she wasn’t pushy enough – although by all accounts she had a temper; mostly, no doubt, old-fashioned anti-woman bias in the art world.

This is called “Salut Sally” and was painted in 1970.  she did a bunch of these paintings around this time that shared the characteristics of these; the mixture of dark patches and panels with that exploding, brilliant white light melting to gold, orange and violet patches and “controlled” dribbles down the canvas.  A sort of mix of Hoffman and Monet – but with Mitchell too.  I think she is stunning – only one picture I’ve seen in the flesh, the one in Tate Modern (much earlier, 1954, I think), but that is much more restrained with a grey background.

Willem de Kooning

I wanted “Palisade” for this, the one on the cover of the Taschen, but couldn’t find a picture, so I’ve picked these two, because one is abstract and the other, one of his familiar beautiful/terrifying women.

The first of these is “Door to the River” ,1960, which is pretty much what it looks like, so maybe its not so abstract after all; the woman is “Woman” , 1950 – 52.  What is there to say about them?  The colours, that yellow,  the brushwork – its all been said, better than I can, so there it is.

Listening to “Tin Pan Alley” by Jimmy Wilson (and Ray Agee, etc., etc).

“They tell me Tin Pan Alley’s the roughest place in town,

They start cutting and shooting, soon as the sun goes down;

Tell me, what kind of place can the alley be?

Every woman I get,

Lord, the alley takes away from me”.

Watched “Brighton Rock”, the original with Richard Attenborough as Pinky;   astounding how quickly the girl is talked into the suicide pact (although of course she doesn’t go through with it) – and how quickly Pinky disappears when he hits the water.  Something, maybe the music and the accents, kept reminding me of Olivier’s “Henry V”.

Blackpaint 22.12.09