To define a feeling: Joan Mitchell, 1960–1965
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Publication Date: 2026
Artist: Joan Mitchell
Introduction by Sarah Roberts. Texts by Sarah Roberts, Saul Nelson, John Ashbery, and Pierre Schneider.
Forthcoming Fall 2026
Dedicated to Joan Mitchell’s remarkable paintings from 1960 to 1965, this richly produced catalogue illuminates a pivotal chapter in the internationally acclaimed artist’s career. After settling permanently in France in 1959, the American painter Joan Mitchell embarked on a period of radical experimentation that diverged dramatically from her earlier work, replacing structured compositional frameworks with more untamed, atmospheric forms. She began spending long stretches living on a sailboat along the Côte d’Azur, absorbing the effects of the shifting light, water, and rugged coastlines of the Mediterranean. Back in her Paris studio, these experiences gave rise to daring and moody canvases that engaged with landscape more directly and visibly than she ever had before. Characterized by dense, central currents of deep greens and blues that veil luminous colors beneath, the paintings of this period pulse with turbulence and lyricism. The poet John Ashbery described them as “an unhurried meditation on bits of landscape and air,” capturing Mitchell’s ability to translate sensation and memory into paint. This catalogue, published on the occasion of the exhibition To define a feeling: Joan Mitchell, 1960–1965 at David Zwirner, New York, explores how these works advanced her approach to structure and color while engaging the enduring themes that define her oeuvre. The volume features an introduction and an essay by the exhibition’s curator, Sarah Roberts, a text by Saul Nelson on the relationship of critic Clement Greenberg's criticism to Mitchell's work, and exhibition reviews from the 1960s by Ashbery and Pierre Schneider, offering rich historical context for this transformative moment in the artist’s career.
Details
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Artist: Joan Mitchell
Contributors: Sarah Roberts, Saul Nelson, John Ashbery, Pierre Schneider
Publication Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781644231890
Retail: $70 | $95 CAN | £52
Designer: Beverly Joel, pulp, ink.
Printer: VeronaLibri, Verona
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9.5 × 11.75 in | 24.1 × 29.8 cm
Pages: 152
Reproductions: 77 illustrations
Artist and Contributors
Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) established a singular visual vocabulary over the course of her more than four-decade career. While rooted in the conventions of abstraction, Mitchell’s inventive reinterpretation of the traditional figure-ground relationship and remarkable adeptness with color set her apart from her peers, resulting in intuitively constructed and emotionally charged compositions that alternately conjure individuals, observations, places, and points in time.
Sarah Roberts
Sarah Roberts joined the Joan Mitchell Foundation in June 2024 as Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs. She previously served as the Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, where she co-curated Joan Mitchell (2021–2022), a major traveling retrospective with a catalogue co-authored with Katy Siegel. She served as primary author and research director of SFMOMA’s Rauschenberg Research Project (2013), and co-curated the museum’s 2017 presentation of the retrospective Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules. Other exhibitions include Amy Sherald: American Sublime (2024–2026); Louise Bourgeois Spiders (2017–2019); and Carol Bove and John Chamberlain: Converse (2019–2020).
Saul Nelson
Saul Nelson is a Junior Research Fellow and Teaching Associate in History of Art at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge. His first book, Never Ending: Modernist Painting Past and Future, was published by Yale University Press in 2024. His writing has appeared in Art History, American Art, Oxford Art Journal, New Left Review, Critical Inquiry, and The London Review of Books.
John Ashbery
John Ashbery (1927–2017) was born in Rochester, New York. He was the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. The winner of many other prizes and awards both nationally and internationally, he received a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama at the White House, in 2012.
Pierre Schneider
Pierre Schneider (1925–2013) was an art historian and critic specializing in French modernism. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, he received his PhD in literature from Harvard University in 1953 before moving to Paris, where he worked with Georges Duthuit on the Henri Matisse archives. He later served as an art critic for L’Express and contributed to ARTnews. Schneider authored several studies on French painters, including a major monograph on Matisse, published in 1984.
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