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The long love affair between the American artist Joan Mitchell and the great French-Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle was one of the most tumultuous in the history of art. Stubborn, hard-drinking, and volatile, the two lived together outside Paris (in a compound where the Impressionist Claude Monet once painted) for more than two decades, partying, squabbling, and churning out huge abstract paintings. Finally, in 1979, Riopelle left with another woman.
I mention the stormy relationship between Mitchell, who died in 1992, and Riopelle, who died this past March, because the two artists are the subjects of separate major museum shows this summer. A retrospective of Mitchell's work has just opened at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art and will be on view until Sept. 29. A Riopelle show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the biggest retrospective of his work since 1991, also closes Sept. 29.
CHANNELED EMOTIONS. If you can get to both these new museum shows -- as I did in recent weeks -- it's a rare chance to see how two enormously talented artists channeled anger, pain, and a love of nature into abstract art. I'm not alone in considering Mitchell, in particular, to be one of the greatest American painters. Another admirer I know of is Roland Berger, a top independent management consultant in Germany, one of whose proudest possessions is a large, 1960 Mitchell abstract he has hanging in his office. The price of Mitchell's paintings at auction has been soaring as other collectors catch on.
In the Whitney show, the paintings I like best are the ones where Mitchell seems to have found refuge from her unruly emotional life in childlike fantasies. Three large abstracts in the show are from her Grande Vallee series, which are based on stories a French poet friend told her of a secret valley the poet played in as a child. Hemlock calls up the reverie of summer days the Chicago-born artist spent as a child vacationing on the shores of Lake Michigan.
The Mitchell and Riopelle retrospectives are just two of the many important art exhibits on right now. If you're traveling this summer -- whether in the U.S. or in Europe -- you'll have a number of marvelous opportunities to see some great art. For a complete list of the major museum shows around the world, check the listings at artnet.com. In the meantime, here's my personal selection of a few of the best ones:
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The closest thing to a blockbuster in the Big Apple this summer is the Met's Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) show, which is on until Oct. 20. The exhibit features 120 works by the onetime stockbroker who took off for the South Seas to paint. The Met also has a big retrospective of works by Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). Even though it has already been shown in Philadelphia and Paris, this collection is fascinating because new research and scholarship demonstrate how deeply Eakins was interested in and influenced by photography.
In Washington D.C.: If you're into photography, by the way, this is a banner summer. The Capital City is hosting two truly groundbreaking shows right now. California photographer Edward Weston, who died in 1958, is getting a major retrospective at the Phillips Collection through Aug. 18, while the National Gallery of Art has an important show up until Sept. 2 of the work of Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), one of the pioneers of American photography. Andreas Gurksy and Thomas Struth, two contemporary German photographers who have been shaking up the art world recently, also are getting star treatment.
Deep in the Heart of Texas: A major show of Struth's work is on at the
Dallas Museum of Art through Aug. 18, and then it moves on to L.A., New York, and Chicago. Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art is featuring a major Gursky show through Sept. 22. Both photographers do huge, painting-like color prints that are in high demand among collectors.
On the Pacific Coast: The photo show I'd most like to see, however, is at the J. Paul Getty Museum near Los Angeles, which through Sept. 29 is featuring about 100 rare and historically important photos by Gustave Le Gray, the 19th century French photographer. Serious collectors go gaga over vintage Le Gray prints, which now command up to $1 million apiece, and this is the biggest Le Gray exhibit ever held in the U.S.
If in L.A., I'd also want to catch the big Andy Warhol retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art through Aug. 18. Warhol is now considered by some collectors to have been the seminal American artist of the late 20th century and this show features a lot of his most familiar images -- from the famous Campbell's soup cans to the portraits of Chairman Mao. L.A. is also the only U.S. stop for the show, which was organized by a Berlin museum.
Outside the U.S.: In addition to the Riopelle show in Montreal, there are two must-see exhibits, as far as I'm concerned. The first is at the Vancouver Art Gallery through Sept. 15 featuring three great North American women artists -- Mexico's Frida Kahlo, America's Georgia O'Keefe, and Canada's Emily Carr (SLIDE). This is the last chance to see this exhibit, which has already been shown in Washington and Santa Fe.
In Europe, if you want to scope out little-known artists whose careers may be about to take off, the place to go is Documenta, the huge contemporary art exhibit held every five years in Kassel, Germany. Just about every major contemporary art collector in the world makes the trek to Kassel, which can be done as a day trip from Frankfurt, in the hopes of discovering new artists to collect.
Arthur Goldberg, a prominent New York collector, says he saw at least a half-dozen artists whose work he's interested in, ranging from the forty-something Finnish photographer and video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila to Yona Friedman, a Hungarian-born architect who lives in Paris and is pushing 80. And Victoria Miro, a top London gallery owner, says she's studying several of the artists she saw because she's considering showing their work.
Of course, the dozen shows I've mentioned here are only a fraction of what you can see, depending on your tastes and where you're traveling. If you don't find these shows tempting, do a little research online, and you're bound to come up with something that is.
Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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