GRANDES CARRIÈRES
JOAN MITCHELL, 1961-62
Look at the middle. That dark thing — brown, blue, almost black. It’s not just sitting there. It’s pulling everything in. The pinks and whites around the edges are trying to keep things calm. No no, it’s fine, there’s light, there’s air, nobody panic. Your eye isn’t buying it. Goes straight to the middle. This is Grandes Carrières. Joan Mitchell. Mitchell came up in late-40s New York. Cedar Tavern. Pollock. de Kooning. Frank O’Hara. Smoke, booze, opinions flying across the room like ashtrays. She was younger than them, but belonged in there. Loud, profane, sharp as hell. Could outdrink most of them. And the men, for once, knew they were dealing with an equal. But here’s what made her different. A lot of Abstract Expressionism was trying to get rid of the world. No little tree. No nice river. No picture of anything. Just gesture, force, paint, boom. Mitchell never fully bought that. She painted from things she remembered. Lakes she swam in as a kid. Dogs. Fields. Places that stayed in the body after the body left. In that crowd, that could sound embarrassing. Too sentimental. Too attached. She didn’t care. And the color — pink, yellow, that buried blue. The purists could call it decorative. Let them. She used it anyway. Then in 1959, she left New York. Which is wild. New York was the center of the art world, and she just said, alright, enjoy yourselves, and moved to France. Stayed there until she died in 1992. She wasn’t outside that New York room because she couldn’t get in. She walked out. And yes, she got dropped from a lot of the histories. Being a woman helped them forget faster. This painting comes a couple years after the move. The title, Grandes Carrières, means “the great quarries.” And that matters. Because she’s not painting a place. She’s painting the hole something came out of. She’s down in there. Pulling color out of the wall by hand. Dark first. Then that blue buried inside it. Then pink — weirdly tender — showing up where you don’t expect it.