Mitchell Johnson Painters' Table Interview June, 2012

"Truro Breezeway," 2012 Private Collection, California

You can read the interview here.

Mitchell Johnson & Chris Busa on WOMR's Art Talk August, 2011

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.