These presentiments trace back to Mitchell’s wealthy Chicago childhood. She was the second daughter of Marion Strobel, a poet whose promising career was stymied by her authoritarian and patriarchal husband, who expressed keen disappointment that Joan was not a son. Her resultant dis-ease continued into adulthood, leading her to live and work in Europe and, after 1959, to limit her extended forays back to New York and its misogynistic art world milieu. Her transatlantic artistic identity did turn fraught—for France, Mitchell wryly explained, her art was too American (i.e., violent) and, for Americans, too French, her paintings downgraded as decorative.

Mitchell’s fierce sensuality and predilection for risk became subsumed into passionate compositions beginning in Paris, followed by the exquisitely poetic, oversized canvases she produced after moving into a more peaceful life in Normandy. In Vétheuil, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Matisse seemed like “colleagues” to her, and Mitchell developed a deeply considered visual dialogue with their unmistakably French approaches to space and color.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is fortunate to own two exemplary oil paintings—Sale Neige (1980) and Orange (1981)—demonstrating a transition toward the renewal of Mitchell’s later work. Sale Neige, whose title seems to—but doesn’t really—refer to dirty snow, exemplifies the strikingly atmospheric landscape-based abstractions, evocative of nature’s ever-changing temperaments, that Mitchell developed by the eighties. In the prominent upper area of this edge-to-edge, hardly “dirty” composition, downward strokes of white, tinted with pinks, lavenders, and lighter blue, partially reveal a scaffolding of black lying underneath. Below, more thickly applied, colorfully accentuated horizontal and vertical scrawls are punctuated by gravitational drips, suggesting a receding natural topography through complementary touches of lilac, cobalt blue, and dazzling yellow.

In conceptualizing Sale Neige, Mitchell recalled the silent and colorless winters of her Lake Michigan childhood: the white is “in me,” she always maintained. Orange exemplifies the artist in a different frame of mind. Painting with a bolder brush, here her manipulation of vigorous strokes into a grid-like over-covering replaces, more brashly, land and sky references traditional in landscape painting. “People always look for the horizon. I want to hold a surface in space,” Mitchell explained of her nature-based abstractions. This superimposition appears heavier, denser, and more textured at the top, a reverse compositional ploy Mitchell developed to represent emotional intensity in a structural way. Pentimenti below in glowing pastel hues, especially the pale greens and lavender of her Vétheuil garden, subtly hint at deeper space.

White pigment patches scattered throughout Orange interject air, acting as rest stops for the viewer’s eye. These sections serve to modify the overwhelming edge-to-edge markings in dissonant orange, a hue that Mitchell used frequently, its emotive permanence in her consciousness traceable back to childhood. The artist—the centenary of whose birth is being celebrated in 2025—insisted, “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me and remembered feelings of them which of course become trans-formed.” Further differentiating herself from the New York School, she chose to modify improvisation with clarity. “I want to know what my brush is doing,” she said. Her work also served a deeper purpose: “Painting” she confirmed, “is what allows me to survive.”

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Among them is a handwritten letter from Joan Mitchell (1925–1992), a leading abstract expressionist painter, with whom Nochlin was especially close. In the six-page letter, likely written in the 1980s, Mitchell reflects philosophically on the distinctions between music, poetry, and painting. She also professes her love of dogs; fondly remembers living on St. Marks Place in New York City, where she was able to exercise sexual independence; and expresses her affection for Nochlin.

Like Nochlin, who initially pursued writing before embracing art history as her primary vocation, Mitchell once considered becoming a writer. Both women were ardent Francophiles. In their youth, both had immersed themselves in physical activity—Nochlin as a dancer, Mitchell as a competitive figure skater, diver, and tennis player.

The careers of these two women also intersected. In 1986, Nochlin conducted an oral history of Mitchell, available in the Archives of American Artists, and wrote an important essay on the artist. In “A Rage to Paint: Joan Mitchell and the Issue of Femininity,” Nochlin addressed the issue of women’s rage and its expression in Mitchell’s work. “For Mitchell,” Nochlin wrote, “rage, or anger, was singular, consuming. When I was with her, I could often feel rage, scarcely contained, bubbling beneath the surface of her tensely controlled behavior.” Nochlin, once present during a fight between Mitchell and a partner, described it as “terrifying.”

Nochlin’s description of her response to Mitchell’s anger may hint at a fruitful tension between the two women. Their friendship may have thrived in part because Nochlin’s analytic ice proved a valuable counterpoint to Mitchell’s fire. Whether or not that was the case, it is clear that Nochlin grasped the roots of the artist’s fury. She writes, “rage, and its artistic corollary, the rage to paint, are both central to the project of Joan Mitchell.”

Nochlin also reflects on the utility of opposites in Mitchell’s work, which made her paintings so striking: “Meaning and emotional intensity are produced structurally…by a whole series of oppositions: dense versus transparent strokes; gridded structure versus more chaotic, ad hoc construction; weight on the bottom of the canvas versus weight at the top; light versus dark; choppy versus continuous brushstrokes; harmonious and clashing juxtapositions of hue—all are potent signs of meaning and feeling.” This description can also be read as a metaphor for Nochlin’s own deep, rewarding friendship with the artist.

To learn more about Nochlin, visit the Library and Research Center’s research guide on the scholar. For more on Mitchell, see Five Fast Facts: Joan Mitchell.

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Awed by nature’s beauty and complexity, generations of women artists have celebrated and interpreted the environment through art. In the 17th century, artists embraced botany and entomology, uniting science and aesthetics in meticulous illustrations of flowers and insects. Whether investigating familiar or far-flung regions, artists have responded to nature as an expression of their desire to expand human knowledge.

As a setting for human activity or a visualization of an artist’s memories and emotions, landscape imagery piques our curiosity and invites subjective responses. Other artists extend their vantage point beyond the horizon, inspired by the cosmos as a means of understanding the universe and our place in it.

Gallery Highlights:

Spider III (1995), a bronze sculpture by modern art legend Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), proves that natural beauty comes in all forms. Bourgeois, whose mother died when she was 21 years old, associated arachnids with maternal protectiveness. She frequently remarked that her mother shared the admirable attributes of spiders: patience, industriousness, and cleverness.

Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) celebrated an often-overlooked element in nature within her exuberant painting Sale Neige (1980). The work’s French title translates to “dirty snow,” alluding to the grit and grime that spoils the pristine white over time. Mitchell associated cold weather with silence and loneliness, yet her vigorous brushwork and blend of black, white, purple, and green pigments communicate an energetic, even joyous quality.

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Between 1997 and 2002, photographer Justine Kurland (b. 1969) focused her camera on landscapes as she drove across the United States. In her series “Girl Pictures,” Kurland staged teenage girls in various outdoor settings, creating a dreamlike, dystopian world where they “claim territory outside the margins of family and institutions,” as the artist has said. Her photographs are also on view in NMWA’s exhibition Live Dangerously (September 19–January 20, 2020).

“Magnetic Fields,” a series of intensely colored abstract paintings by Mildred Thompson (1936–2003) convey phenomena not visible to the naked eye, as well as the artist’s personal interest in quantum physics, cosmology, and theosophy. Through her art, Thompson sought to connect scientific knowledge and metaphysical philosophy.

Dutch still-life painter Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) was renowned during her lifetime. Over centuries, however, she was written out of art history because of her gender. Ruysch created works for an international circle of patrons and served as court painter to the Elector Palatine of Bavaria. With razor-sharp technical accuracy, her floral compositions artfully combine blooms from different seasons, many dotted with insects and spiders. More of Ruysch’s work is featured in NMWA’s exhibition Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age, opening October 11, 2019.

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1. High Achiever

As a young girl, Mitchell worked tirelessly to win her hard-to-please father’s approval. She was a published poet by age 10, a champion tennis player and diver, and a competitive figure skater. Mitchell was named “Figure Skating Queen of the Midwest” in 1942 and competed in the national championship that year, though she finished a disappointing fourth. After the loss, she vowed to only focus on one thing and do it well: art.

2. Precious Cargo

In 1949 Mitchell married her first husband, Barney Rosset, in Provence, France. The couple decided to make a life in New York and, instead of flying, booked a first-class suite aboard an ocean liner departing from Cannes because they had too much luggage—and too many paintings. Mitchell’s works were taken by rowboat to the ship and then carefully loaded aboard.

3. Lady Painter

Mitchell sarcastically adopted the moniker “Lady Painter,” knowing that her work was on par with male Abstract Expressionists, but unrecognized by them and the art world at large. She is quoted as saying, “Not bad for a lady painter,” with a smirk while walking through her 1988 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

4. Hearing Color

In the first full-length biography of the artist, author Patricia Albers revealed that Mitchell had both synesthesia and a photographic memory. But these perceptive talents are not the only things that made Mitchell successful. To think that would, as Albers writes, “disregard her painterly intelligence, her professionalism, her years of training and work.”

5. Women Supporting Women

In 1979, after Mitchell’s relationship with Jean-Paul Riopelle ended, the artist found support in a new friendship with Gisèle Barreau, a French composer. In the years after meeting Barreau, Mitchell’s works are said to be her most radiant. Her Grande Vallée series is based, in part, on a story Barreau told her. During this inspired time, Mitchell also became the first American woman to have an exhibition at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

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Mitchell spent much of her career in France—moving to Paris in 1959, and later, the small village of Vétheuil in 1968. There, with nature as a backdrop, her work changed significantly, encompassing more spaciousness and light. In her book Ninth Street Women, Mary Gabriel described this change: “In an environment so rich in natural bounty…a part of Joan long buried awakened. The ‘violent’ high notes of yellows and reds she first used as a girl returned. Joan’s canvases shone like light.” Mitchell herself once explained the refuge she found in rendering nature: “I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist.”
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Ever-present in the Mulleavys’ work is the landscape of California. This influence is deeply rooted in their childhood, which was spent outdoors, exploring the redwoods and beaches that surrounded their home in Aptos, California. Kate says, “There is probably a little bit of California’s natural beauty in every one of our collections.” Laura describes “tide pools, redwood forests, mustard fields, California poppies, and apple orchards…the entire landscape had a sort of hazy atmosphere. Hare Krishnas, psychedelic skaters, hippies, punks, surfers—all of these memories shaped the way we think creatively.”
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Rodarte’s Spring/Summer 2011 collection reflects the Mulleavys’ memories of growing up in 1970s and 1980s suburbia. Dresses echo the faux-wood paneling of their childhood home, the blue-and-white porcelain in their house, and a bronze Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, shown on the Great Seal of California. Other dresses reflect impressions of Santa Cruz, where two subcultures—the surfers and hippies—are transformed into printed silk gowns that replicate tie-dye combined with neoprene bibs. California, thus, is not only a source of inspiration, but also an ideological point of reference, both free-thinking and iconoclastic.

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The natural world often serves as a source of inspiration for artists. Because of their purported powers of observation, women artists historically were encouraged to render the natural world. Still-life painting was deemed appropriate since it did not require the training needed to render the human body. NMWA’s collection galleries feature women artists from the 17th and 18th centuries who produced precise and imaginative flower paintings, as well as modern and contemporary artists who continue to draw inspiration from the natural world.
Dutch flower painter Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) gained renown for her meticulous attention to detail and scientific accuracy. Because her father was a botanist she studied his collection from an early age. Ruysch’s education allowed her to put her own spin on the genre of still-life painting. She employed her scientific knowledge in her paintings by including insects and signs of decay. Although each flower is depicted with scientific accuracy, her compositions are imaginative. Ruysch combined blooms from different seasons and locations. In reality, these particular flowers would not have existed in the same arrangement.

Contemporary artist Sharon Core (b. 1965) often uses photography to mirror still-life paintings by well-known male artists and trick the viewer’s eye when presenting them with natural subjects. Core looks beyond traditional standards of beauty. At first glance, Single Rose (1997) appears lovely and delicate, but its velvety petals seem to be constructed from thin slices of meat. The work confronts the expectations of what is and is not considered beautiful in nature—and challenges the traditional subjects depicted by women artists.

Sale Neige (1980) by Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) serves as an abstracted interpretation of nature. The monumental painting’s title translates to “dirty snow” in French. Snow, often romanticized as pure and fresh—not unlike qualities often attributed to women—appears grittier and less pristine in Sale Neige. Vigorous brushstrokes of pale color at the top of the canvas seem to melt onto the more vividly colored lower third. Like many of her works, Sale Neige signifies Mitchell’s memories of or feelings for the landscape. Mitchell extended the scope of Abstract Expressionist painting by applying it to the subject of nature.
Works by these innovative women transcend simple, pleasing depictions of the natural world. See these works online or by visiting NMWA!

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Anne Truitt (1921–2004)

1. Unlikely Union
Truitt straddled the line between post-World War II wild child Abstract Expressionism, known for the emotional use and gestural application of color, and its austere successor Minimalism, notable for geometric, manufactured forms. She simultaneously evokes Joan Mitchell’s expressive use of color and John McCracken’s perfect planks.

2. Minimal Representation
Truitt was one of only three women included in the groundbreaking Minimalism exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors at the Jewish Museum in 1966. Judy Chicago (then known as Judy Gerowitz) and Tina Spiro (Matkovic) also presented works in the exhibition, making the gender representation ratio one woman for every 13 men.

3. Tricky Truitt
Truitt unabashedly employed trompe l’oeil techniques to trick viewers’ eyes. Recessed bases give the impression that her works hover ever so slightly off the floor. Truitt’s subtle shifts in color create the illusion of three-dimensionality on the flat sides of her sculptures.

4. Collaborative Creation
Beginning in 1961, Truitt stopped constructing her own sculptures, focusing her time and energy instead on painting their surfaces. This begs viewers to consider the concept of authorship in relation to artworks made in collaboration.

5. Directions
In preparatory drawings for Summer Dryad (1971) Truitt assigned a cardinal direction to each side of the sculpture, suggesting the current display of the work at NMWA is how she wished for it to be installed and seen.

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Lalla Essaydi
(b. 1956, Marrakesh, Morocco; lives in New York)

Essaydi began her career as a painter, she developed an interest in photography first as a means of documenting her other work, and then, she says, “It became a medium I fell in love with.” She creates multilayered images that confront the historical Orientalism of Western artists, particularly sexualized depictions of North African and Middle Eastern women.

Her images often focus on a woman or small group of women whose clothing and bodies are decorated to match their surroundings. She uses henna—reclaiming the traditionally “male art of calligraphy”—to challenge gender dynamics within Moroccan and Arab cultures and between the East and West.

In Her Own Words

“When I was at school I made a huge Orientalist painting, and a curator from a museum was interested in it. When I tried to show her my other works, she had less enthusiasm. She only wanted the big fantasy. I started talking about the work, and she was surprised, she had thought the image was autobiographical. I was shocked that an expert in this area of art didn’t even know it was just a sexual fantasy.”

“From that moment, I knew I needed to do something. I am an Arab woman, and I don’t see myself in these paintings. A lot of people ask me why I choose to dwell on this issue, and it’s because it’s not solved.  It may not be about the odalisque now, but the odalisque is what later became the veiled female figure. If we don’t unveil that founding myth first, we cannot begin to address the rest.”—Lalla Essaydi, interview in ArtAsiaPacific

What’s On View?

The large-scale triptych Bullets Revisited #3 (2012), a set of chromogenic prints on aluminum, is in many ways characteristic of her work: it references Orientalism by depicting a woman lying down, and her body and clothing provide a canvas for henna calligraphy. In addition to henna, however, her surroundings are elaborately decorated with silver and golden bullet casings. With these, Essaydi evokes symbolic violence and restrictions on women.

The work’s visible black film borders emphasize the image’s artifice. It is large and visually lush, but Essaydi uses the borders, as well as the elaborate setup and deliberately abstracted, uninviting space, to underscore the fact that it does not reflect reality.

Visit the museum and explore She Who Tells a Story, on view through July 31, 2016.

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Helen Molesworth, the chief curator of MOCA, says that although the art world is progressive, “that doesn’t set us apart from the larger cultural forces at play, which have for the past several hundred years promoted the idea that genius and men and power and money are all very intertwined with one another.”
Front-Page Femmes
Marisol Escobar, known in the 1960s for her wooden Pop Art sculptures, died at the age of 85.

Adriana Varejão’s hand-painted tile mural covers Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics aquatics stadium.
Tauba Auerbach makes a large, geometric pop-up book.
Mona Hatoum’s survey includes endoscopic video of her internal organs.
Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani was released from prison.
A fire at German artist Rosemarie Trockel’s home damaged and destroyed more than $30 million worth of art.
Cornelia Parker installed a Hitchcock-inspired barn on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Los Angeles Times traces 89-year-old artist Betye Saar‘s oeuvre through her recent and upcoming exhibitions.
Unnerving, surreal characters in Floria González’s photographs explore the impact of motherhood on her life.
Virginia-based teen Razan Elbaba uses photography to “break the stereotypes and significantly express the true goal of Muslim women.”
Art Basel visitors will help performance artist Alison Knowles toss a giant salad before it is served.
Heather Phillipson’s three-part installation for Frieze New York involves dog sculptures, video, trampolines, pillows and more.
The Guardian shares the @52museums Instagram project—highlighting one of NMWA’s posts.

“It’s so empowering for this generation to see a black ballerina doll that has muscles,” says Misty Copeland about the new Barbie made in her likeness.
NPR describes a new album by Anohni, formerly Antony Hegarty, as “a pop album that is simultaneously an act of dissent.”
Gabriela Burkhalter’s The Playground Project explores forgotten artistic playgrounds of the 20th century.
Sweet Lamb of Heaven, by Lydia Millet, is “an extraordinary metaphysical thriller.”
The New Yorker delves into two articles written by Harper Lee about the case that brought her to Kansas with Truman Capote.
The documentary Eva Hesse, structured around excerpts from her journals, provides a psychological portrait of the artist. Watch the trailer.
Shows We Want to See

Five women artists from the Electric Machete Studios collective locked themselves in their studio for 48 hours. The resulting works reflect the “complex identities of the women as feminists and artists.” Interventions: A Xicana & Boricua Guerrilla Perspective explores the relationship between art, feminism, and indigenous identity.
Abstract work by overlooked Victorian spiritualist Georgiana Houghton will be featured in London. The Guardian writes, “Houghton would host a seance, talk to her spirit guide and draw complex, colourful and layered watercolours.”
Carmen Herrera—now 101 years old—“distills painting to its purest elements.”

The post Art Fix Friday: May 6, 2016 appeared first on National Museum of Women in the Arts.

As a student at the Royal Danish Art Academy, Justesen helped pioneer the birth of the feminist art movement in Denmark. In 1970, Justesen joined a collective of women artists whose experimental art project, Damebilleder (“Women’s Images”), portrayed women’s role in society “from the beauty parlor to dish-washing.”
The group’s efforts challenged gender perceptions by focusing on the female perspective and capturing women’s experiences through art. Justesen explains, “My generation is brought up with the male gaze, a gaze that still seems synonymous with defining the history of art . . . we want our gaze back in history, to secure diversity.”

On view at NMWA, Justesen’s photograph Lunch for a Landscape (1975) portrays a jubilant, nude Justesen sitting in a shopping cart with her arms raised. Justesen said, “I made this when I was raising two small boys, breastfeeding the baby, and also living as a spouse in a foreign country [Canada]. I describe my life then as a daily ‘housewife ballet.’ Here, a housewife is on her way in the vehicle of her life.” Justesen juxtaposes a celebration of freedom with a traditional symbol of wifely duty, a grocery cart.

In Justesen’s own words, “through our upbringing, we were defined as reproduction tools and were supposed to behave in order to find suitable husbands.” The core of the feminist art movement challenged the marginalization of women and the confines of strict gender roles. Justesen’s Lunch for a Landscape seems to imply that the adoption of domestic duties does not mean giving up the desire for freedom. Works like the photograph on view at NMWA provided a voice for Justesen and enabled her to establish herself in the art world.

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