About the Artwork
Known as a "second generation" Abstract Expressionist, Mitchell left New York for Paris in 1959, just as this movement began to be hailed as the "new American painting." She was unapologetic in her preference for living in France, and her work reflects the French landscape tradition and the paintings of Claude Monet, in particular. In her paintings from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s, Mitchell refined her technique to overlapping, calligraphic lines, evoking images of flower-covered hills. Before, Again II is painted in intense colors, laid across the canvas in short strokes and long drips with enormous freedom and luminous effect. The artist described this work, painted during an illness, as a preoccupation with mortality, but one that reaffirms life and defeats death.
Before, Again II
1985
Joan Mitchell
1925-1992
American
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 110 × 78 3/4 inches (279.4 × 200 cm) Framed: 111 3/8 × 79 3/8 × 2 1/4 inches (282.9 × 201.6 × 5.7 cm)
Paintings
Contemporary Art after 1950
Founders Society Purchase with funds given in memory of Henry Ford II by his sister, Josephine F. Ford
1988.18
Restricted
Markings
Signed, verso: J. Mitchell
Inscribed, titled and dated, verso: Before, Again II 1985
Provenance
Xavier Fourcade Gallery, Inc. (New York, New York, USA).1988-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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Joan Mitchell: New Paintings. Exh. cat., Xavier Fourcade Gallery, Inc. New York, 1986, p. 11 (ill.).
Bulletin of the DIA 64, no. 2/3 (1988): p. 15, (fig. 11).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
© Estate of Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell, Before, Again II, 1985, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds given in memory of Henry Ford II by his sister, Josephine F. Ford, 1988.18.
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