Joan Mitchell

Mitchell, a Chicago-born abstract expressionist who mingled with the de Kooning crowd, has lived in France since the 1950s, yet the New York School still claims her as one of their own. Many of her paintings embody her felt responses to trees, water, fields and flowers. Frantic swirls of colors are suspended in equilibrium; powerful, slashing strokes remind one of Franz Kline but are more organic. The later pictures are open and airy, often exploding in colorful calligraphic gestures. Mitchell likens her artistic goal to stopping time, as in a still photograph. In examining the way she achieves her effects, Bernstock, assistant professor of art history at Cornell, shows how the artist drew inspiration for her pictures from poets Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara, Rilke, Wordsworth and Baudelaire. Featuring 118 color plates, this monograph complements a traveling exhibition. (May)