Monet - Mitchell. Toward an Abstract Impressionism.
Sep 21, 2022
Much more than a visual comparison between pictorial languages: in the fall of 2022, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris places Impressionist master Claude Monet (1840-1926) and American abstract artist Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) in dialogue, revealing evocative and poignant correspondences. Curated by artistic director Suzanne Pagé with the special partnership of the Musée Marmottan Monet, the exhibition is a poetic journey through Monet's later production and Mitchell's intimate Abstract Expressionist masterpieces, realized in the second half of the 20th century in the United States. Viewers will be surprised by the profound affinity of this encounter. They will discover such a resembling gaze in attitude and intentionality, even if elaborated in distinct cultural-historical periods.
What Masterpieces We Will See
Monet-Mitchell is an impressive exhibition, presenting 60 significant works from the two artists' careers. 36 works by celebrated impressionist Claude Monet-including the magniloquent Water Lilies series finally reunited in its entirety-and 24 abstract paintings by Joan Mitchell will dialogue in the building designed by architect star Frank Gehry. The two bodies of works create a bridge between themes and visual languages, also telling the story of a fruitful artistic exchange between France and the United States. It is symbolic, in fact, the presence of the Agapanthus Triptych (ca. 1915-1926), the nearly 13-metre-long artwork that made Claude Monet widely recognized in the United States, now held in three different American museums. On the other hand, Joan Mitchell's Grand Vallée series also stands out, a series now held at the Centre Pompidou and representing a singular synthesis between the energy of American action painting and the measured introspection of European traditions.
The Monet-Mitchell dialogue is, moreover, deepened by a retrospective devoted to the American painter. This is an updated version of a monographic exhibition that debuted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), which aims to rethink the singular career of Mitchell. The female artist, who gravitates toward the postwar movement of Abstract Expressionism, is reassessed in light of her French experience. Her style is in connection to European masters, starting with Monet, but also Cézanne and Van Gogh.
Claude Monet, Les Agapanthes, 1916-1919. Huile sur toile, 200 x 150 cm. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
Surprising Correspondences
However, what do Claude Monet's landscapes have in common with Joan Mitchell's powerful gestural paintings? The selection of works makes this glaringly obvious even to the untrained eye. The dialogue is established on several levels, finding surprising points of contact. In fact, the exhibition photographs two original moments in the production of the two artists: the later works of Monet, in retreat in the garden of Giverny and with increasingly severe vision problems, characterized by blurred outlines and glimmers of vivid light; and Joan Mitchell after her move from the United States to Vétheuil, a French village not far from where Monet lived. A first correspondence is, therefore, literal: the paintings on display tell of the same places, those of the banks of the Seine and the Île-de-France countryside in which both artists were immersed. The shared landscape elicited different emotional and artistic responses, but the same urge to portray the surrounding nature in a particularly immersive and sensual manner.
Joan Mitchell, Quatuor II for Betsy Jolas, 1976. Huile sur toile, 279,4 × 680,7 cm. Paris, Centre Pompidou, en dépôt au Musée de Grenoble. © The Estate of Joan Mitchell.
There are relevant correspondences at the visual level as well. Both artists seem to move in a back-and-forth between figurative and abstract forms. Monet, in his later phase, approaches an increasingly abstract representation of the landscape, devoid of perspective references and sharpness; while Mitchell, despite gravitating to the Abstract Expressionism movement, breaks away for singularity: her abstract works reveal a connection to the adopted landscapes of France and a desire to capture their ever-changing moments, just as the Impressionists did. The canvases also show a similar sensibility: both artists painted with great attention to light and color, seeking to capture even their most infinitesimal variations. The curatorship choices exalt this aesthetic dialogue, presenting Monet's Water Lilies series suggestively unframed. The large-scale formats of the two productions also echo each other. The visitor's gaze is thus lost in the monumental canvases, discovering landscapes of nature and memory.
It seems almost as if this exhibition investigates correspondences that go beyond the pictorial style, arriving at a more human substrate. The artists show a similar approach to art, which they also define in related terms: driven by "sensations" for Monet, and by “feelings” and “memories” for Mitchell. The lived landscape is transfigured in their canvases, filtered through their personal perceptual experience. As the formalist art critic Clement Greenberg pointed out, Monet can be seen as a precursor of Abstract Expressionism, in that his Water Lilies investigates much more than mere landscape, seeking to capture its comprehensive principle, the essence of nature, and its abstractness. Similarly, Mitchell has a language rooted in gestural abstraction but driven by the emotions aroused by natural elements, first those of Lake Michigan, then the foliage and water of the banks of the Seine.
Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée XIV (For a Little While), 1983. Huile sur toile, 280 × 600 cm. Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. © The Estate of Joan Mitchell
The contribution this mutual affinity made and continues to make to subsequent generations of abstract painters is invaluable: it reveals an approach that could be called abstract impressionism. Monet and Mitchell in their multi-canvas paintings captured the changing aspect of nature and human sensations. Their spontaneous, fast, gestural pictorial approach embodied its transience. The exhibition is therefore an opportunity to rethink two historical artists in a contemporary key and continue to ask questions about the visual language of abstract painting: how much is real in an abstract painting? How can an artist shape the feelings, impressions, and memories of a particular moment or landscape? What is the line between abstraction and representation? "I carry my landscape around with me," often declared Joan Mitchell, increasingly blurring the boundary between inner and outer worlds.
Featured image: Claude Monet, La maison de l’artiste vue du jardin aux roses, 1922-1924. Huile sur toile, 81 x 92 cm. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
