How to look at an abstract painting | Joan Mitchell | PROGRAM

Comments · 94

• MI

  @milootje007 · 3 years ago

  It's abstract expressionism, it's a dance of shape and color and structure. It doesn't need to be more, that is enough to touch someone emotionally in profound ways.

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• ME

  @melissaaimeeroberts9971 · 3 years ago

  "When you say abstract painting what do you mean?" followed by a conversation between three people who are fully engaged in abstract art and literally speak an abstract language... if my mom watched this she would have no idea what you're talking about. The world of art enthusiasts can come across as out of touch and cliqué, if art is an expression why is it so intimidating to approach in conversation? That being said, I had no idea who Mitchell was before this examination and you've caught my interest.

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• BU

  @buddhahoo1 · 1 month ago

  Thank you all for this piquant discussion. Last week as I walked into the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, a Joan Mitchell painting immediately beguiled me. Her fantastic choice of colors and the heavy impasto was so alluring that it was almost scrumptious.

• RJ

  @rjsarner · 3 years ago

  One the most comprehensive studies of Joan Mitchell I have ever heard. Well done to all three ladies for their extensive knowledge and ability to evaluate and describe not only the possible feelings and objective of the artist but with certainty, describe “abstract expressionism” like a boss! Well done to the speakers and film crew! Thank you! It was absolutely educational and inspiring! :)

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• EV

  @EVA55102 · 3 years ago

  Feeling like music is always beautiful

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• JI

  @jimhresco1728 · 3 years ago

  On and on talking and analyzing. It's visual and personal to each individual.

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• SI

  @signjoey · 3 years ago

  My fav definition of art..."Art is whatever you can get away with."  MARSHALL McLEWAN

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• TI

  @timothyobrien9183 · 3 years ago

  I don’t know what she’s doing, but I love her work. The color combinations work beautifully. Her style reminds me of the impressionists.

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• MI

  @missinglink9973 · 3 years ago

  abstraction to me is feeling, emotion, experience, imagination, trauma, sadness, joy transferred from mind body and soul onto a sub straight

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• MA

  @markchandler7089 · 3 years ago

  The best figurative painting is using abstraction and the best abstract painting references aspects of visual reality.  We create visual narratives just as we use language to explain aspects of our experience.

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• LO

  @lomps · 3 years ago

  What struck me is each persons subjectivity expressed in response to the paintings. Its almost like sandbox therapy. The paintings become a way to process how we see, think, and feel. Abstract painting is a language that can be so free that it can describe the ineffable. But we lose the ineffable the second we start to describe it in spoken language. So to me that's the core of abstraction. Its primacy is that the worlds that it describes are pre or post verbal. It washes over you in ways that are impossible to describe or articulate. For example I recently smelled a sprig of white sage while hiking in nature. I tried as best I could to capture how I felt. It was a nostalgia that seemed like a remembrance from the dawn of humankind infused with a kind of sacred optimism. Or like an old friend offering kind words. So it seems like poetry and metaphor might be the only analogous spoken language models to approximate the ineffable qualities of abstract painting.

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• AN

  @anthonylopez9594 · 3 years ago

  Abstraction is like any other painting. The difference being the representative aspects are 'abstracted' at varying levels to the point where often the subject matter becomes about the formal elements of painting rather that a thing. Beyond that we have to engage the artwork based off of what we have before us and what the artist has created in their body of work. For example Mark Rothko seems to be into showing you layers of time quite literally. He allows you to see how the layers build up and affect each other. Then you bring yourself to the discussion as you complete the 'art' in a sense with your own personal experiences.

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