{"data":{"id":"898","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":898,"topgoose_id":1475,"tms_id":898,"display_name":"Joan Mitchell","sort_name":"Mitchell Joan","display_date":"1925–1992","begin_date":"1925","end_date":"1992","biography":"\u003cp\u003eJoan Mitchell’s exposure to art began at an early age: her father was an amateur artist, and her mother was an associate editor at \u003cem\u003ePoetry\u003c/em\u003e magazine. Mitchell studied at Smith College and Columbia University, and earned degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Influenced by the work of \u003ca href=\"/artists/707\"\u003eFranz Kline\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/339\"\u003eWillem de Kooning\u003c/a\u003e, Mitchell began working in an abstract mode in the early 1950s, becoming one of the few women—in addition to \u003ca href=\"/artists/452\"\u003eHelen Frankenthaler\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/722\"\u003eLee Krasner\u003c/a\u003e—to gain notice as an Abstract Expressionist. Mitchell’s paintings are characterized by boldly expressive, varied brushwork; an adventurous feel for color; and a dynamic, often unresolved tension between figure and ground. If such qualities aligned her works with the New York School, their lingering, if tenuous, connection to the outside world, specifically in their evocation of natural sensations such as light and movement, set them apart. The title \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/363\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHemlock\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (an allusion to a Wallace Stevens poem), for example, promotes a reading of the work’s imagery as a tree, and indeed the tight central cluster, composed of verdant calligraphic spikes, supports such an interpretation. The color white functions in this work as both foreground and background, flatness and relief, creating an effect of atmospheric lyricism and contributing to the sense that \u003cem\u003eHemlock\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eis as much about the experience of seeing as it is about the thing seen.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMitchell left New York for France\nin 1959 and remained committed to painting\nabstract takes on landscape throughout\nthe 1960s and 1970s, calling herself “the last\nAbstract Expressionist.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":null,"wikidata_id":"Q469934","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:25:28.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-28T07:03:43.541-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/898/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/898/exhibitions"}}}}