Joan Mitchell had enough of being compared to Claude Monet.
“[Monet] was not a good colorist. The whole linkage is so horrible … He isn’t my favorite painter,” she said in 1986.
But despite those fighting words, critics and contemporaries would not stop mentioning Monet when they talked about Mitchell. And who could blame them?
Not only are Mitchell’s active, abstract brushstrokes reminiscent of the famous Impressionist, but the two artists had many common interests — using nature imagery in their paintings, music, large scale canvases often painted in tryptic, etc. — and they also literally tread the same ground. Mitchell purchased a property in Vétheuil, France, in 1967 with close proximity to Monet’s longtime home in Giverny.
“Her house at Vétheuil actually looked down on his cottage,” says Simon Kelly, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. “Every time she sat out in the morning on her terrace drinking her coffee, she was actually looking down on his house.”
A new SLAM exhibit will examine the connection between the two great painters’ works. Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape opens at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 24, with a free, public preview.
It’s the first major exhibit in the U.S. to show the two in concert and was inspired by a show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. For the St. Louis show, Louis Vuitton lent SLAM 10 major Mitchell works.
“It’s exciting that we have these amazing paintings in St. Louis,” Kelly says. “I think it’s really great to have the work of a major Impressionist, Monet, who is so well known, but also having him with a really important Abstract Expressionist artist, who, to the general public, is not as well known as Monet. … People who come out of the exhibition, hopefully, will realize what a great artist she is.”
As Kelly says, arguably, no artist is known more than Monet. The French painter lived from 1840 to 1926 and was the originator of Impressionism, a style of painting that’s meant to capture the impression or essence of the subject, rather than be a realistic copy. St. Louis is lucky to have one of Monet’s most famous works — the center panel of his Water Lilies triptych — at SLAM.
Mitchell, despite being American, is much less known stateside. A painter in the Abstract Expressionism movement, she lived from 1925 to 1992 and is a significant figure and a master in her own right. Aside from one of Mitchell’s paintings in SLAM’s collection, Ici, her works have never been shown in St. Louis.
In the 1950s, when Mitchell was active, America went through a Monet revival, according to Kelly. The comparison between her work and his might have begun as something as a marketing ploy by her galleries to tap into that interest.
At times in Mitchell’s correspondence, she did express admiration for his art, especially his late paintings that are significantly more abstracted.
But regardless of how she felt about the comparison, those viewing their works side by side can’t miss the connection. The SLAM show makes that obvious through 24 paintings — 12 by each artist — of the landscape of northern France.
Each gallery in the exhibit is themed around a different concordance between the two artists. The first deals with gardens and trees. One striking combo is Monet’s Weeping Willow and Mitchell’s Red Tree.
“I like that juxtaposition,” Kelly says. He points out that Weeping Willow, which was painted in 1922 toward the end of Monet’s life, is an example of how the artist’s work became more abstract, possibly as his eyesight deteriorated and changed with cataracts and cataract surgery.
You really have to look at the image to understand where the tree and its trunk are within the wild brush marks. Mitchell’s Red Tree takes the next step, or a few steps, into abstraction. Yet it’s still undeniably a tree.
“It’s just incredibly vibrant,” he says. “You can see very clearly the trunk of the tree and the range of branches and also the light is teal blue as it is coming through the branches.”
Monet/Mitchell is full of moments such as these. In the third gallery, themed Field, Water, and Reflections, there’s a striking contrast between those famous Water Lilies and Mitchell’s Plowed Fields. Both are giant multi-canvas pieces. And though the lilies are much less abstracted, the paintings are unified by a common color palette.
Critics in Mitchell’s time started calling her the heir to the color of Monet. “I think initially, she liked it, but then she just got fed up,” Kelly says.
The last two galleries deal with aspects of abstraction: color and pictorial space. The final includes what Kelly says is “probably the most abstract painting ever” by Monet: Water Lilies circa 1917 to 1919. Painted squiggles suggest waves, and vertical lines evoke river grasses — but there is no consensus as to which side of the painting is up so it’s anyone’s guess.
It pairs nicely with Mitchell’s River as well as Ici, the Mitchell piece from SLAM’s collection, which she painted toward the end of her life.
“She had cancer, and she was physically not strong,” Kelly says. “This painting still has this kind of incredible vibrancy and energy to it. I can still see references to nature, to the landscape … I’m glad that we can sort of culminate this show with a work which is from our collection.”
Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape is open at the Saint Louis Art Museum East Building (1 Fine Arts Drive, 314-721-0072) from Saturday, March 25, to June 25. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, $6 for children over five and free for those under 5 and for museum members. More information at slam.org/exhibitions/monet-mitchell-painting-the-french-landscape.
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