Joan Mitchell a Lyrical Artist

When we hear someone speak of a lyrical artist, we are quick to think of the hottest pop star or rapper in the musical world; however, based on the argument proposed by Dore Ashton in her article “The Lyrical Principle: On Joan Mitchell”, the lyrical artist does not work with words at all. Joan Mitchell is an artist who has been classified as an abstract expressionist who took pride in declaring that her pieces of art “aren't about art issues. They're about a feeling that comes to me from the outside, from landscape”. Given her very emotional portrayal of art it seems to blur the lines between physical art and poetry. In the article Ashton argues that despite the fact Joan Mitchell’s mother was a poet, her lyricism “does not come from her mother, or any biographical source, but from her intuitive feeling for painters, and painting, with whom she sensed affinities.”

Mitchell was not interested in studying the artists in her generation or those who thought they had to see things in order to recreate them; instead, Mitchell looked up to the style of the older generation of artists who worked in a studio with a canvas on which anything could be created. She was interested in portraying emotions and thoughts, not simply recreating the looks of things. During the 1950s there were a large number of artists who began taking interest in this new form of art that no one was able to classify because it was so diverse depending on what the artist was feeling; however they are shared one thing, the improvisation of emotions on a blank canvas. The freedom the artists felt as they painted these unclassifiable pieces of art was described by Mitchell as “the moment in painting when the painter feels like a bicyclist riding with no hands.”

Mitchell moved from her studio in Manhattan to Paris, where the art scene was much more vanguard, yet Mitchell still associated with those artists who, like herself, had no interest in conforming to traditions. The circle she encompassed herself with was arguably similar to the one she maintained in Manhattan. Mitchell was quick to draw ties to many young artists such as Jean-Paul Riopelle who was from the western hemisphere and moved to Paris as a young artist. Riopelle had been among the youth influenced by the painter Emile Bourduas who gave a very passionate declaration towards the allegiance of freedom which influenced young artists everywhere.

Mitchell’s lyricism is a direct result of the painters and paintings she admired and associated herself with. The choice to follow the older generation of artists as opposed to conforming to the styles of her own generation repeatedly opened many doors for her growth and development as a lyrical artist. Ashton argues that Mitchell’s lyricism was not predetermined or a result of any biological contributors but instead a result of those she associated herself with and the ties she created along the way.