Columns and Pine Trees
Artist
Nancy Mitchnick
(American, born 1947)
Date1985
MediumCharcoal on paper on panel
Dimensions84 × 116 in. (213.4 × 294.6 cm)
ClassificationsDrawing
Credit LineGift of the artist, 2013
Object numberUAC5959
Description“I do love the grid,” Nancy Mitchnick once confessed in an interview; “I don’t plan it, I find it.” She found it in the lissome trunks and reaching limbs of her Storm Trees, the wide horizons and shorelines of her Ipswich Cycle, and the patchwork of beams, lath and architectural details of the crumbling buildings in her Detroit Series. The grid is here, too, in the tall, narrow panels and wide, expansive scenery of this quadriptych — four plywood planks covered in rough paper, each reaching seven feet high but only about two feet wide. The panels feel even taller thanks to the Ionic columns that rise to buttress the top edges of three of them, and the slender trees that climb past the boundaries of all four. At the same time, vigorously hatched branches and thickets, and a row of white stones just below midpoint, broaden the space as well. The piece is immersive; the slim slivers of scenery force the viewer to take in this forest environment a slice at a time, making it feel still larger. The incongruous Greek columns and stone border suggest this is not just a clearing in the woods, but a formal stage. This allusion to theater, along with the multiple panels and heavy, energetic charcoal line work, recall both the bold style and the theatricality of the Expressionist painter Max Beckmann’s work; when she taught at Harvard, Mitchnick would take her painting students to look at the Beckmann triptych at the university museum, to encourage them to make gutsy marks and not “futz around.” One can imagine Beckmann’s costumed actors emerging from behind Mitchnick’s columns, taking the stage to put on a show.___
Born in Detroit in 1947, Cass Tech and Wayne State grad Nancy Mitchnick was one of the founders of the storied Willis Gallery, and painted portraits of many of the key figures of the Cass Corridor avant-garde; still, she’s often described as an “outsider” even from the city’s 60s/70s artistic fringe. Like her Wayne State mentor Robert Wilbert, she was also noted for her still lifes — painted, as were her portraits, in a vigorous style influenced by the German Expressionist collection at the DIA. In 1974, Mitchnick moved to New York, where she taught at Bard College; later she was an instructor at the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, before heading to Harvard, where she taught until 2009. During the 2000s, she made frequent trips to her home town, revisiting family memories and painting ruined buildings. In 2011, Mitchnick made the move back to Detroit; five years later, she had a major show of her recent work at MOCAD, appropriately titled Uncalibrated.
Text by Sean Bieri
