Joan Mitchell: The intense life

There are many interesting nuggets about Mitchell in this CBS News extended interview.

Mitchell was described as both charming and cantankerous.  Her love life was tumultuous. A heavy drinker and smoker, she suffered from depression.  And, often traveling between France and the U.S., she said she always felt like an outsider, as she told documentary filmmaker Marion Cajori in 1992: “In France, I’m an American gestural painter, and lyric on top of it, which is very pejorative. And here, I’m a Frenchie, because I have color, and decorative, ooh, ooh!  So, you can’t win,” she laughed. “And on top of it, I’m a girl, a woman, a female!”

 

 

Mitchell’s work is discussed in the book Abstract Painting: Concepts and Techniques