Monumental Color: Cecily Brown, Sam Gilliam, and Joan Mitchell brings together significant artworks by three quintessential abstract artists. Through the performance series Monumental Connection, featured artists engage in dialogue with performers whose work resonates with Sam Gilliam’s love for jazz, Joan Mitchell’s lifelong connection to poetry, and the frenetic physicality of Cecily Brown’s paintings.
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was a leading Abstract Expressionist painter active in the New York School of painters and poets. She was celebrated for her adeptness with color, evoking the natural world. A published poet at the age of 10, Mitchell grew up studying literature closely throughout her life, despite being committed to abstraction on her canvases. Mitchell refused legibility, often working on multiple panels which she arranged and rearranged.
Join us for a poetry reading presented in partnership with local publication Three Fold, curated by Chris Tysch, and featuring poetry by Eléna Rivera and more Detroit-based poets.
Eléna Rivera was born in Mexico City, raised in Paris, France, and is based in New York City. Rivera has a particular connection to Mitchell, as she already published poems for Joan Mitchell’s work in Three Fold. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Arrangements with Peter Hughes (2022), Epic Series (2020), Scaffolding (2017), and The Perforated Map (2011). She received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Translation, and was a recent recipient of fellowships from MacDowell (2020), Trelex Paris Poetry Residency (2019) and the SHOEN Foundation (2016).
This event is free with museum admission. Readings by Detroit-based poets to be announced.
Tagged:
