Provincetown Arts 2011 and 2012

Above is last year's Provincetown Arts which contained an advertisement for my 2011 exhibit at Munson Gallery in Chatham.  The new 2012 magazine will feature a large article on my work written by WOMR's Chris Busa plus four reproductions.  You can see new paintings at both the Schoolhouse Gallery in P-Town and the Munson Gallery in Chatham.  Here's the 2011 ad:

"Legacy in Continuum: Bay Area Figuration" at Bakersfield Museum of Art March 22-May 27, 2012

 

"To increase the complexity of the color action in his recent series, Mitchell Johnson began adding flat distinct areas of color over existing paintings. Each painting becomes like a dynamic quilt, with grids and bars overlaying an image of a town in Italy, a small yard in Denmark, or a California landscape. Using a variety of colors for each rectangular grid, his paintings evolve slowly, arriving at resolution when his colors feel related and are no longer random. Even when Johnson lived in New York City, he was told that  his paintings showed an affinity to the Bay Area artists. Now a transplanted New Yorker, having moved to California over twenty years ago, and meeting many of the original Bay Area artists, Johnson realizes that working two dimensionally naturally brings out his dialogue with the art of the area, especially David Park's use of color." - Roberta Carasso, Ph D. 2012

Exhibit article by Darko Topalski.

Mitchell Johnson paintings in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

The Mitchell Johnson painting, "Truro (bands)," 2009 which belongs to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, appears with four other paintings in Dan Fogelman's latest film, Crazy, Stupid, Love.  Paintings have also been included in Nancy Meyers's films, Its Complicated (2010), The Holiday (2006) and Somethings Gotta Give (2003).  More recently, paintings appeared on the set of People Like Us (2012) and Revenge.

Chris Busa interviews Mitchell Johnson on WOMR's Art Talk Program

 Links to the WOMR interview:

Part One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZh8yX2_dc

Part Two https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyjtoD1jX8A

Not Goethe Triangle

I was looking through my copy of Josef Albers’ complete, Interaction of Color in 2011 getting ready to speak to some kids about color theory. I don’t know how many people have noticed that the Goethe Triangle (one example from internet above) appears in some of the small paperback editions of Interaction of Color but not all of them. The triangle is one of the silkscreens in the reissued version of the complete original. Per Albers' request, the now famous silk screen was prepared by Rackstraw Downes and another Yale student for the original, handmade Interaction of Color, published by Yale in 1963. Albers first saw the triangle in a small german book on color theory written by Carry van Biema. There are notes at the Albers Foundation that document Albers' search for Biema’s book as he was preparing the final copy of Interaction of Color. Curiously, it turns out that Biema "made up" the Goethe triangle and if I remember correctly how the late Fred Horowitz explained this to me, Albers knew about the mistake before he died, but only well after his book had legitimized Biema’s creation and furthered awareness of the "triangle". I only bring this up because the triangle is all over the internet and in college art classrooms – even at Brown University, gaining momentum still. 
I didn't create this post to simply set the record straight. The best part of this little tale is that if the "Goethe triangle" helps people learn, then it doesn’t really matter who created the first version and I think Albers would agree that its legitimacy is irrelevant. The error somehow drives home Albers' own point about how complex and problematic it is to teach color theory; how personal the experience of color can be for anyone who takes its study seriously. Albers was a big advocate of practice and experience before theory. This was in opposition to Itten who was determined to develop a science for establishing a color course,  “facts” and theory as a prerequisite to the playful hands-on learning. (You can observe Itten's stance by noting the flow of the layout of "The Art of Colour.") The triangle, legitimate or not, begs to be reproduced by hand which invites a conversation about whether colors really mix and behave as described by theory or "fact". (you'll have to decide the answer for yourself.) Some people might be surprised to learn that for all of those fellow artists Albers embraced: Klee, Monet, Cezanne, Kandinsky, Goethe, Albers was not supportive of either Itten or Hans Hofmann.

Truro Painting by Mitchell Johnson in March 2008 Art in America

 

Mitchell Johnson exhibit, Here and Now, at Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA March - April, 2008.  The exhibit catalog is still available here.

Cape Arts Review of Mitchell Johnson exhibit at Munson Gallery Chatham 2007

 

Mitchell Johnson

“New Paintings From Cape Cod and Europe”

Munson Gallery, Chatham, MA July 27-August 15, 2007

For more than 20 years, Mitchell Johnson has simultaneously explored the expressive potential of abstract and figurative paintings. Well known as a landscape painter, he has recently begun exhibiting large abstract paintings that reveal a new and distilled approach to color and shape.

Mitchell Johnson was born in 1964 in South Carolina, but grew up in New York and Virginia. He studied painting and drawing at Randolph-Macon College, the Washington Studio School, and Parsons School of Design, where he earned an MFA in 1990. He was strongly influenced by his New York teachers: Paul Resika, Leland Bell, Larry Rivers, Nell Blaine and Robert DeNiro, Sr., all former students of Hans Hofmann. Since 1990 Johnson has divided his time between his studio in Palo Alto, California and his favorite painting locations in Italy, France and Bornholm, Denmark.

Johnson enjoys traveling to find challenging compositions that speak to his interest in both the development of the painting and a visceral response to particular patterns and situations. “I never look for beautiful vistas or quintessential moments, I stop when a view or a series of colors and shapes grabs me. The views that draw me in usually speak to clarity and mystery, accessibility and elusiveness.” He believes that a representational painter should heed the lessons of abstraction and be receptive to the painting’s own will.

For this show in Chatham, Johnson says, “I’m still working on a number of pieces that were started during my last trip to the Cape last year. Most of the paintings in the exhibition will have a formal emphasis in color and shape.” In addition to paintings from Truro and Chatham, he will be including paintings from Scandinavia, France, Italy and Germany.

Says Johnson, “My work is still going back and forth between abstraction and representation, as it has for many years.” In fact, a new book about Johnson’s work has recently been published-entitled “Doppio Binario,” meaning double track or parallel pursuit, the book is by Marilena Pasquali, with additional essays by Donia Bijan, Peter Campion, W.S. DiPiero, Annette Luciani and Claude Pichevin. Movie buffs will be interested to know that one of Johnson’s paintings can be seen in the first scene of the movie “The Holiday,” starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslett, Jude Law and Jack Black.

-Gillian Drake Cape Arts Review 2007