Cora Cohen Trust

A Dialogue with Joan Mitchell

Moissac and Tournus are sites of well-known Romanesque churches in France, while St. Severin is a notable Gothic church in Paris.

Fountain of Moissac, 1988 Flashe, oil on linen 103 x 95 in.

Fountain at Moissac, 1988

Flashe, oil on linen

103 x 95 in.

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Molloy at Tournus, 1987 Flashe, oil, on linen 97 x 103 in.

Molloy at Tournus, 1987

Flashe, oil on linen

97 x 103 in.

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Outside St. Severin, 1987 Flashe, oil on linen 60 x 50 in.

Outside St. Severin, 1987

Flashe, oil on linen

60 x 50 in.

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Mitchell’s early-1990s birch bark “postcard” from Vermont includes a mention of Cohen’s partner at the time, the artist Leonard Bullock.

A strip of white birch bark that has been utilized as a postcard to draft and deliver a message

Undated postcard from Joan Mitchell to Cora Cohen, n.d.

Birchbark and pen

5⅝ x 3¾ in.

A Dialogue with Joan Mitchell

A Dialogue with Joan Mitchell

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1984–1992

Back to Index

1984–1992

Cohen's relationship with Joan Mitchell was both personal and professional. Mitchell offered her friendship, advice, and a model of artistic independence, which proved formative to both her technique and her sense of professional community. The relationship also placed Cohen within a genealogy—women painters continuing Abstract Expressionism in idiosyncratic ways; even as her work departed from Mitchell's example, Cohen remains seen as a woman painter continuing Abstract Expressionism in idiosyncratic ways. Time spent at Mitchell's home in France also opened Cohen to Romanesque architecture and the question of how forms mutate while retaining structure.

From “A Personal History”
by Cora Cohen

In 1984 I was introduced to Joan Mitchell by the gallerist and critic Klaus Kertess. I had just come back from a year as a visiting artist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it was there I realized how important painting was to me—not just art, but specifically painting. I had taken only red, yellow, and blue paint with me, and resumed working in oils, moving the paint around with a small brush. Joan suggested I needed a bigger brush, and as I started to work larger, the paint became heavier and thicker. In hindsight, I can see I was teaching myself how to make the paintings I wanted to make, in a way I never had: dense paintings with a worked quality, the stroke small in relation to the whole.

It was important for me to know someone from that era who was a committed painter, a woman, and a pro, and Joan continued to offer me friendship, advice, and encouragement through the late 1980s. She invited me use her place in France as a base while traveling. I was particularly interested in Romanesque art and architecture—how forms mutated into other forms. Nothing seemed stable yet the structure was immutable. I began to use the poured and spread seemingly unintended paint as a scaffolding on which to hang my brush work. Monumental structures that position the human subject in relation to the cosmos became an important consideration for me. Sites like the Acropolis, El Alcázar de Cordoba, Moissac, and St. Severin gave me a sense of art as something vast while remaining in touch with the fundamental human impulse to navigate the world in search of physical, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

Cora Cohen and Betsy Sussler, “Interview with Joan Mitchell,” Bomb Magazine, No. 17, Fall 1986

 

Cohen's relationship with Joan Mitchell was both personal and professional. Mitchell offered her friendship, advice, and a model of artistic independence, which proved formative to both her technique and her sense of professional community. The relationship also placed Cohen within a genealogy—women painters continuing Abstract Expressionism in idiosyncratic ways; even as her work departed from Mitchell's example, Cohen remains seen as a woman painter continuing Abstract Expressionism in idiosyncratic ways. Time spent at Mitchell's home in France also opened Cohen to Romanesque architecture and the question of how forms mutate while retaining structure.

From “A Personal History”
by Cora Cohen

In 1984 I was introduced to Joan Mitchell by the gallerist and critic Klaus Kertess. I had just come back from a year as a visiting artist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it was there I realized how important painting was to me—not just art, but specifically painting. I had taken only red, yellow, and blue paint with me, and resumed working in oils, moving the paint around with a small brush. Joan suggested I needed a bigger brush, and as I started to work larger, the paint became heavier and thicker. In hindsight, I can see I was teaching myself how to make the paintings I wanted to make, in a way I never had: dense paintings with a worked quality, the stroke small in relation to the whole.

It was important for me to know someone from that era who was a committed painter, a woman, and a pro, and Joan continued to offer me friendship, advice, and encouragement through the late 1980s. She invited me use her place in France as a base while traveling. I was particularly interested in Romanesque art and architecture—how forms mutated into other forms. Nothing seemed stable yet the structure was immutable. I began to use the poured and spread seemingly unintended paint as a scaffolding on which to hang my brush work. Monumental structures that position the human subject in relation to the cosmos became an important consideration for me. Sites like the Acropolis, El Alcázar de Cordoba, Moissac, and St. Severin gave me a sense of art as something vast while remaining in touch with the fundamental human impulse to navigate the world in search of physical, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

Cora Cohen and Betsy Sussler, “Interview with Joan Mitchell,” Bomb Magazine, No. 17, Fall 1986