18. We get a little abstract and we make up a bunch of words and phrases in order to describe what Joan Mitchell was doing on the canvases she painted in 1964, a kind of annus mirabilis for Joan Mitchell in which she obliterated herself and therefore also became most herself.
BEFORE JOAN MITCHELL moved out to Monet’s part of France, before Jean-Paul Riopelle ran off with the dog-walker and while she was still in the heyday of her greatest period of artistic ferment, around 1964, she painted a number of canvases that are mostly just centers. I love these paintings so much that I don’t really want to talk about them.
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