Product Details

• Actors: Joan Mitchell
• Directors: Marion Cajori
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: NEW VIDEO GROUP
• DVD Release Date: July 27, 2010
• Run Time: 58 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B003ELMR8U
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,293 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Joan Mitchell: Portrait of An Abstract Painter" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: New Video Group Release Date: 07/27/2010 Run time: 58 minutes

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orgainc and Fierce, December 25, 2010

By 

janjamm - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joan Mitchell: Portrait of An Abstract Painter (DVD)

Joan Mitchell's work is explicitly astonishing. This film is elegant, imaginative, graceful. Mitchell is a hard person to pin down and I think it is because, like her paintings, she just is. What she sees is spared her conscious manipulation, emerging uncensored. I like the idea that her paintings are like poetry, in the way a poem is not a statement but a summary of feelings that somehow cohere into a meaning which can only be felt, rather than spoken. There's just the moving feeling. Her work is organic and fierce and much to be admired. This film did such a good job of introducing me to Mitchell, even though Mitchell resisted the filmmakers. I don't think her resistance is intentional. I think that Mitchell is just a rare, visual creature for whom words are wholly inadequate. I watched it twice in a row.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good film, difficult subject, July 25, 2011

By 

Draftsman - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Joan Mitchell: Portrait of An Abstract Painter (DVD)

This film portrays a painter who died in 1992 but whose reputation is still growing. As we get further from the Abstract Expressionist period and the macho myths that defined it, we are able to see more clearly the merits of some of the painters who were outside the canon. Joan Mitchell moved to France in the 1960's, and she continued to develop her art outside the New York hothouse. Some of her greatest work came towards the end of her life in the 1980's and 90's, and we see that here. Her best paintings, such as the Grande Vallee series, rank with the work of people like Kline, de Kooning, and Sam Francis.

She is not an easy interview, though. The film shows her evasiveness and unwillingness to be pinned down on art or her private life, which was tumultuous and fraught with drinking and disappointment. Yet somehow she was able to channel the pain and difficulty into creating very great art, and this video is a fine introduction.

5.0 out of 5 stars Too short, December 23, 2011

By 

toronto - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joan Mitchell: Portrait of An Abstract Painter (DVD)

This is a fine video of Joan Mitchell -- a great, great painter. The paintings are luminescent, and some of the photography in the film matches them for the beauty (ah, Paris). The only drawback is that it is too short: one wants just more.

Of course there is another drawback, which is that the discussions about art in the movie are silly. Mitchell is constantly saying I can't talk about what I do, and meanwhile the people around her who talk about her pictures are embarassing themselves.