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City Landscape - Wikipedia Jump to content

City Landscape

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City Landscape
Art Institute of Chicago
ArtistJoan Mitchell
Year1955
MediumOil on linen
Dimensions203.2 cm × 203.2 cm (80 in × 80 in)
LocationArt Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Accession1958.193
Websitewww.artic.edu/artworks/86385/city-landscape

City Landscape is the title given to a series of several abstract expressionist oil paintings by 20th-century American painter Joan Mitchell. Art critics have described the abstract works as a kind of cityscape, with their colorful, central elements each resembling a grid found in urban planning. The central density of painting techniques and the outer spaces are both widely-critiqued.

The most prominent version is held by the Art Institute of Chicago and has been frequently lent out on exhibition for retrospectives of her work. This is a work that is associated with Mitchell as an exemplar of her work. Mitchell produced many artworks of a similar style during the mid-1950s. Rockefeller University sold one work in the series in 2024, receiving just over $17 million for it at auction after deciding to list it to fund scientific research. Both well-known versions were painted in 1955 and acquired from the Stable Gallery in 1958 after limited exhibition exposure.

Background

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Joan Mitchell's yearbook photo from circa 1942
Joan Mitchell, c. 1942

Mitchell was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before settling in New York City.[1] Mitchell and her mother are referred to as heiresses.[2][3] At the 1950 Whitney Museum Annual, Mitchell saw her first Willem de Kooning.[4] Mitchell became a part of the abstract expressionism movement and pursued art with emotion-filled coloration.[1] In 1955, Mitchell split her time between Paris and New York City.[5] In the 1950s, the art world was dominated by white men.[6] Mitchell is regarded as among the greatest abstract expressionist painters along with Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning.[7][8] She was among the few women artists of her generation to achieve acclaim.[9]

Mitchell's style of abstract expressionism differed from her peers in several ways. Clement Greenberg, for example, argued that abstract expressionism, unlike traditional art, should avoid a dominant focal point. This compelled Mitchell to produce works featuring central visual elements.[10] Unlike some of her abstract expressionist contemporaries who were action painters that worked fast and spontaneously with their paint, Mitchell painted at a gradual pace with intent. "I paint a little", she stated. "Then I sit and I look at the painting, sometimes for hours. Eventually the painting tells me what to do."[4] In October 1957, in the first major feature on Mitchell's work that appeared in ARTnews, Irving Sandler noted that Mitchell rarely made alterations to her works (preferring to only add paint to her canvases or scrap them and restart), while her peers would often modify their work.[11]

When the Rockefeller version was auctioned in 2024, Christie's stated that at least three 1955 works from Mitchell bear this title.[12] When the Chicago version toured on exhibition in 2021, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art confirmed that Mitchell titled several 1950s works thusly.[13]

Chicago version

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One version of City Landscape is a 1955 80 in × 80 in (203.2 cm × 203.2 cm) oil on linen work. That work was first exhibited by the Walker Art Center from October 23 to December 5, 1955. The Art Institute acquired it in 1958 from the Stable Gallery. The Art Institute included it in four of their own exhibitions between 1958 and 1968. Then, it exhibited at Corcoran Gallery of Art, February 27 to May 1, 1988; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 26 to July 17, 1988; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, September 17 to November 6, 1988; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, December 2, 1988, to January 29, 1989; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, February 26 to April 23, 1989.[14] This was regarded as a major retrospective exhibition.[15]

City Landscape exhibited at Whitney Museum of American Art, June 20 to September 29, 2002; Birmingham Museum of Art, June 27 to August 31, 2003; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, September 21, 2003, to January 7, 2004.[14] This tour, entitled The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, was a retrospective survey.[16] The tour was scheduled to continue at The Phillips Collection from February 14 to May 16, 2004.[8] When the final tour stop was changed to the Des Moines Art Center, January 31 to April 25, 2004, City Landscape was not included.[14]

It also exhibited at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, being delayed to September 4, 2021 – January 17, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic; Baltimore Museum of Art, delayed to March 6 – August 14, 2022; and Fondation Louis Vuiton, delayed to October 5, 2022 – February 27, 2023. It was scheduled to appear at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, but the venue cancelled.[14] This work was also regarded as a retrospective.[13]

City Landscape is praised for the orchestration of "ragged swipes of hot pink and red with licks of blue, green, ocher, and black" and "the complex ways she built up layers of marks, dripping lines, and vast swatches of color to create a vibrant interwoven visual space".[17] The work is considered to be landscape-derived meandering work with a "hovering central mass" that is compared stylistically to Hudson River Day Line (1955).[8] In a review of her 59-piece 2002 Whitney Exhibition and its published catalog, entitled The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, Joan Marter notes that the "fundamental centripetalism" of these two specific artworks presented an early sign that even as an abstract expressionist painter, Mitchell used Figure–ground convention in order for "the sides and edges of the canvas to support internal activity as though acting like sky around clouds."[18] According to James Cuno, the bundle of pink, scarlet, mustard, sienna and black central pigments represents the pathways of a city.[1] Smithsonian writer Nora McGreevy noted that "The painting's grid-like structure and dense, frantic explosion of color are suggestive of an urban environment."[6]

This is a work often associated with Mitchell. When Margaret Randall reviewed "Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art" for The Women's Review of Books, City Landscape was the work that they chose to represent Mitchell as the example of her work.[19] This version was included in Cuno's book, Master Paintings: In the Art Institute of Chicago.[1] McGreevy described the work as a standout among the 80 works included in the post-Pandemic tour.[6]

At the Art Institute of Chicago, the work is considered one of the most important pieces in the collection, and it is presented prominently throughout the museum's digital and print resources. The museum included a video about it as an element of its "Essentials Tour".[20] They also included it as part of various highlights listings.[21][22] The museum also had various styles of educational materials dedicated to this specific work.[23][24]

Rockefeller version

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The Rockefeller University version of City Landscape

Mitchell produced a 64.5 in × 73.5 in (163.8 cm × 186.7 cm) oil on canvas City Landscape in 1955 that exhibited in Carnegie Institute, October-December 1955. Then it exhibited at North Carolina Museum of Art March-April 1957. Rockefeller University acquired it in 1958 at the Stable Gallery.[12] After being exhibited in 1955 and 1957, and then acquired in 1958, the work never left campus.[12][25] City Landscape hung for a long time in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Dining Room next to Franz Kline's Luzerne where it had been inaccessible to almost anyone but campus staff, visitors, and leading scientists.[25][5] Before auction, the work had hung in Theobald Smith Hall.[5]

By the mid 2010s, Mitchell's paintings began to sell at auctions and art fairs for very high prices. In 2014, an untitled Mitchell's 1960 abstract painting sold for $11.9 million ($15.8 million in 2024), to establish a record auction price for an artwork by a female artist.[26][27][28] In 2018, Blueberry (1969) established a record for a Mitchell work at auction when it sold for $16.9 million ($21.2 million in 2024) at Christie's New York.[29] In May 2021, Mitchell's painting 12 Hawks at 3 O'Clock (ca. 1962) sold for a record $20 million ($23.2 million in 2024) at Art Basel Hong Kong.[30] In 2023, Untitled (c. 1959) sold at Christie's for $29.16 million ($30.1 million in 2024) on November 9 and Sunflowers (1990–91) sold at Sotheby's for $27.9 million ($28.8 million in 2024) on November 16, marking the first two works from the artist to sell at auction at over $20 million.[31][32][33] In May 2024, Noon (c. 1969) realized an auction result of $22.6 million at Sotheby's.[31][34] In June 2024, a work titled Sunflowers (1990–91) sold at Art Basel in the $18–$20 million range,[35] but this was not the 2023 Sotheby sale work.[36]

Although Rockefeller University had a $2.5 billion endowment and a recently completed $777 million funding campaign, the benefits of the monetary value of the painting outweighed its value as a rarely seen painting.[25] The Rockefeller University is a very prestigious biomedical research center whose professors consistently perform leading edge research against diseases that has been recognized with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Lasker Awards (considered the American Nobel), and the National Medal of Science. Art sale proceeds at Rockefeller University would be expected to produce great benefits to society.[5] In 1977, when the University sold Jacques-Louis David's painting Portrait of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (1788) for $4 million ($20.8 million in 2024) to Charles Wrightsman, who later donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the proceeds funded two professorships and four graduate fellowships.[25] The first two professorship recipients were Maclyn McCarty and Norton Zinder.[37] Rockefeller President Richard P. Lifton noted that the University is "not a museum", that Mitchell paintings had "dramatically increased in value in recent years" and that University had interest in funding "artificial intelligence and neurodegeneration" research.[38] City Landscape was estimated to sell in the $15 million to $20 million range and eventually sold for $17,085,000 at Christies on November 19, 2024.[12] Rockefeller also sold a second Joan Mitchell in that auction (Untitled, 1955) for $9,380,000.[12][39] Jointly, the two works had been expected to sell for up to a combined $32 million.[38]

Its 2024 auction lot essay groups it in with 1955 works Hudson River Day Line in the McNay Art Museum collection and The Lake at Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art as well as the Chicago version for leading Mitchell works from that era.[12]

Reviews

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The work is lauded for its painterly use of a variety gestures and marks to demonstrate colourist skills.[5]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d Cuno 2009, p. 151.
  2. ^ Albers 2011, p. dust jacket.
  3. ^ Albers 2011, p. 21.
  4. ^ a b Solomon, Deborah (November 24, 1991). "In Monet's Light". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 10, 2022. Retrieved August 4, 2025.
  5. ^ a b c d e "Where art meets science: two paintings by Joan Mitchell exemplify The Rockefeller University's pioneering vision". Christie's. October 30, 2024. Archived from the original on November 5, 2024. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  6. ^ a b c McGreevy, Nora (September 1, 2021). "The Poetry and Passion of Joan Mitchell's Abstract Expressionist Paintings". Smithsonian. Retrieved August 31, 2025.
  7. ^ Diehl, Travis, Seph Rodney, Andrew Russeth and Holland Cotter (May 29, 2025). "What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in May". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ a b c Kernan, Nathan (September 2002). "Joan Mitchell. New York". The Burlington Magazine. 144 (1194). Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.: 578–581. JSTOR 889539. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
  9. ^ Gabriel, Mary (2019). Ninth street women : Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler : five painters and the movement that changed modern art (1st Back Bay paperback ed.). New York. ISBN 978-0-316-22617-2. OCLC 1124485876.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Greenberger, Alex (September 2021). "Joan Mitchell's Resplendent Paintings: How the Abstract Expressionist Resolved the Unresolvable". Archived from the original on February 22, 2023. Retrieved August 31, 2025.
  11. ^ Sandler, Irving (October 1957). "Mitchell paints a picture". ARTnews. 56 (6): 44–47, 67–70. Archived from the original on July 8, 2014. Retrieved August 31, 2025.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Kaplan, Emily (November 19, 2024). "The Rockefeller Mitchells: Science for the Benefit of Humanity". Christie's. Archived from the original on May 17, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  13. ^ a b "Quick Looks: 8 Vibrant Paintings in Joan Mitchell". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. August 2021. Archived from the original on September 9, 2024. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  14. ^ a b c d "City Landscape". Art Institute of Chicago. 2025. Archived from the original on July 17, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  15. ^ Albers, Patricia (2011). Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780375414374. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
  16. ^ Kertess, Klaus (June 16, 2002). "Her Passion Was Abstract but No Less Combustible". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 14, 2013. Retrieved November 23, 2012.
  17. ^ "Quick Looks: 8 Vibrant Paintings in Joan Mitchell". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. August 2021. Archived from the original on September 9, 2024. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
  18. ^ Marter, Joan (Spring–Summer 2004). "Untitled". Woman's Art Journal. 25 (1). Woman's Art Inc.: 56–59. doi:10.2307/3566505. JSTOR 3566505. Retrieved August 11, 2025.
  19. ^ Randall, Margaret (October 2018). "Not A Muse". The Women's Review of Books. 35 (5). Old City Publishing, Inc.: 18–20. JSTOR 26501115. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
  20. ^ "Joan Mitchell's City Landscape {{|}} Art Institute Essentials Tour". Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on April 29, 2025. Retrieved August 21, 2025.
  21. ^ "Highlights:Artists and the City". Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved August 21, 2025.
  22. ^ "Highlights:If You Like This, Try This (Part 2)". Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on May 24, 2025. Retrieved August 21, 2025.
  23. ^ "Educator Resource Packet: City Landscape by Joan Mitchell". Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on August 3, 2025. Retrieved August 21, 2025.
  24. ^ Palmer, Shannon (23 June 2020). "Matters of Color: Seeking Solace in City Landscape". Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved August 21, 2025.
  25. ^ a b c d Ho, Karen K. (October 31, 2024). "Christie's Will Auction Two Joan Mitchell Paintings from Rockefeller University Estimated at $32 M." ARTnews.com. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  26. ^ "Sale 2847 Lot 32". Archived from the original on May 15, 2014. Retrieved May 14, 2014.
  27. ^ Crow, Kelly (May 14, 2014). "Christie's Art Sale Brings In Record $745 Million". Wall Street Journal.
  28. ^ Kazakina, Katya. "Billionaires Help Christie's to Record $745 Million Sale". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on 14 May 2014.
  29. ^ Ho, Karen K. (October 31, 2024). "Christie's Will Auction Two Joan Mitchell Paintings from Rockefeller University Estimated at $32 M." ARTnews.com. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
  30. ^ Villa, Angelica (May 20, 2021). "$20 M. Joan Mitchell Painting Sells During Art Basel Hong Kong's Early Hours". ARTnews.com. Archived from the original on August 23, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  31. ^ a b Babbs, Verity (April 19, 2024). "Four Career-Defining Joan Mitchell Masterpieces Head to Auction". Artnet. Archived from the original on November 11, 2024. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  32. ^ Armstrong, Annie (November 8, 2023). "Which Joan Mitchell Would You Buy If You Had Upwards of $25 Million to Spend?". Artnet. Archived from the original on August 11, 2024. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  33. ^ Stanley, Jessica (November 10, 2023). "20th century evening sale totals $640,846,000 marquee week running total $748,297,800". Christie's. Retrieved August 2, 2025.
  34. ^ Watson, Olivia (May 17, 2024). "Leonora Carrington and Joan Mitchell Lead Exceptional Results for Women Artists". Sotheby's. Retrieved August 2, 2025.
  35. ^ Lauter, Devorah (June 11, 2024). "On Art Basel's First Day, Sales Roll In and the Art World Breathes a Sigh of Relief". ARTnews.com. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  36. ^ "A Life of Beauty: The Collection of John Cheim". Sotheby's. 2023. Archived from the original on June 14, 2025. Retrieved August 3, 2025.
  37. ^ "Lavoisier painting returns to Rockefeller". Rockefeller University. Archived from the original on September 23, 2024. Retrieved August 10, 2025.
  38. ^ a b Greenberg, Susan H. (November 4, 2024). "Rockefeller University to Sell 2 Abstract Expressionist Paintings". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved August 31, 2025.
  39. ^ Stanley, Jessica (October 30, 2024). "christie's presents the rockefeller mitchells science for the benefit of humanity". Christie's. Archived from the original on November 12, 2024. Retrieved August 12, 2025.

Book sources

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