Happy 100th Joan Mitchell!

An excerpt from my conversation with the poet, Eileen Myles, on Mitchell

Today marks 100 years since the birth of the great painter, Joan Mitchell (1925–1992). To celebrate, I thought I’d share an excerpt of a conversation I had with the poet Eileen Myles on Mitchell back in 2021. It remains one of my favourite podcast episodes, ever. Listen in full. Enjoy!

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KH: Joan Mitchell's career spans four decades from the 1950s–90s. In that time, she became a master at transforming paint into gusts of light, energy and movement; smacking and smearing layers of colour onto her surfaces. It's as though you can imagine her jumping up and fighting these gritty canvases.

When confronted with them they feel so epic, so theatrical, aggressive, but at the same time, so tranquil, like she's conjuring or tearing apart centuries worth of art making. How do you feel when you're confronted with a work by Joan Michell?

EM: I feel many ways. I think that’s probably what I like about the experience of looking at them. I think every time I look at them, they're different. I just go for the blue ones, and so that makes me lean towards the early ones. So, the brighter ones I kind of have a harder time with. Yet when I'm in front of one, I'm like, ‘Oh, oh’, you know, and then it becomes something else. So, they're very mutable, as well as being strong. I think that's part of the fascination.

I found myself looking a lot at a painting called Swamp from 1956 … that Joan Mitchell weather is really in full force. The palette’s cool. It’s different, it’s dull in a way. You can really see the brushstrokes, and even just feel the glee when a smash of orange comes in. It’s almost like it was like a cigarette flick or something. You know?

KH: She gives herself to them in a way you can feel her presence. I don’t think she was even that tall but she kind of conquers these giant canvases!

EM: Uh huh. I love all the ways in which I've read and heard about her – that she was such a jock. Since being a child, a girl, a young woman, she was always diving and doing physical things. You feel that physicality in the work. And, as you say, the tranquillity of somebody who is very comfortable in their body and uses it vibrantly. They can stay still, and that stillness is in here too.

KH: When did you first come to Mitchell’s work?

EM: When I was a young poet. I guess, when I was 25 and 26, a whole crew of us took workshops at St. Mark's Poetry Project. Alice Notley loved to get us to look at art and think about art in our poems and lead us towards Frank O'Hara poems, and then said, there's a [Mitchell] show right now.

Right away she was, for me, practice for looking at abstract art. I'd certainly looked at abstract art before, but the assignment to make a poem of it. We are all huge Frank O'Hara-ites, so it was very exciting that there was a poem written for Joan Michell. Or even that he edited his famous lunch poems in her studio. That moment was such a moment in all of our little poet hearts. The Joan space held the space, and their friendship held the space. It’s just like, ‘ok, who was this female painter, who is this woman?’

KH: You said in your poem that you could have met her, because you might have been at the same parties?

EM: It’s so funny. I take my dog for a walk in the afternoon, and we get a slice of pizza on 2nd Ave. A couple of doors away from where my friend the painter Robert Harms met Joan, and where Joan lived. I was anticipating I was talking today – I even wrote a poem because I just thought, ‘wow, we’re just in the neighb’ today’.

KH: I’d love to hear it!

EM: I don’t know if it works, it’s called Diet Coke:

Diet coke says recycle me / I took the dog on the subway today and today I have an alarm on my phone called Joan Mitchell / And later on tonight I said I’d be Joaning / This dog sees everything on second ave / not far, historically, from when Robert Harms met Joan Mitchell in the apartment of Joe Lissore right over there/ I think of building collapsing/ I’m having a slice nearby / At the part everyone’s laughing/ I say I’m boning Joan tonight, I’m boning up on Joan Mitchell/For the famous woman artist podcast / honey badly wants a bite / the light just changed as bright the kind of Stéphane Grappelli violin playing while bicycles pass / Matthew said I would have sobbed the end was so good / If I had authentic feelings / we laugh / I just spent an hour zooming with my shrink the parade of exes in Province town, the man in the orange cap walking away / I would cry if it wasn’t so damn joyous, he’s lower the awning on the pizza place but these feelings just won’t go away

KH: That’s fantastic.

EM: I mean, it sounded okay. It sounded okay.

KH: I love the boning Joan!

EM: Oh, it's so bad! It's so bad. I was like, ‘this is really offensive’. But it seems it could only go there. It was always in there.