Joan Mitchell / Michael Goldberg

Joan Mitchell
My Landscape II
1967
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Joan Mitchell
Field for Skyes
1973
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Joan Mitchell
Weeds
1976
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington-DC

Anonymous Photographer
Joan Mitchell with Michael Goldberg
ca. 1950
 gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Joan Mitchell
Letter to Michael Goldberg
ca. 1950
ink on paper
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

                                                           

Hey beautiful
                 Just got your letter – "oh for just a chance to love you – could I love you" – can't figure out whether I like the radio on or off – Je t'aime – God you mean a lot to me – it's never been like this before in my life. I cleaned the studio – made the bed – I like it so much – the white palette things are sort of in the middle of the room – I can't paint against the wall like you had them – I'm using this paint off your palette – I feel so close to you – I'm still working on that green & black thing – so slow and it's so big – started a couple more little – nothings much – I keep thinking we could live here together but I must not think at all. Drank a bottle of bourbon with Guston last night – talked about painting – we don't agree at all but he was nice – he doesn't like Gorky or de Kooning – likes Mondrian and more intellectual or classic or whatever you call them things. I would like to paint a million black lines all crossing like Beckmann – beautiful – agony or not . . .

Michael Goldberg
Untitled
1951-52
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michael Goldberg
Hill #12
1953
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
Sardines
1955
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
Red Sunday Morning
1955-56
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Michael Goldberg
The Creeks
1959
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
Odes by Frank O'Hara
with Prints by Michael Goldberg
1960
screenprint (book cover)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michael Goldberg
Untitled
1962
ink on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michael Goldberg
Still Life
1965
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
New Canaan
1965
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
Landscape
1965
oil pastel and collage on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michael Goldberg
Le Grotte Vecchie I
1981
mixed media on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Michael Goldberg
Untitled
1983
collograph and engraving
Princeton University Art Museum

from Ode 29, Book 3, paraphrased in Pindarique Verse

        Enjoy the present smiling hour;

        And put it out of Fortune's power:

    The tide of business, like the running stream,

        Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,

    A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous flow,

            And always in extream.

        Now with a noiseless gentle course

        It keeps within the middle Bed;

        Anon it lifts aloft the head,

And bears down all before it, with impetuous force:

        And trunks of Trees come rowling down,

        Sheep and their Folds together drown:

    Both House and Homestead into Seas are borne,

    And Rocks are from their old foundations torn,

And woods made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.

        Happy the Man, and happy he alone,

            He, who can call to day his own:

            He, who secure within, can say

        Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

            Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,

    The joys I have possest, in spight of fate are mine.

        Not Heav'n itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.  

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by John Dryden (1685)