The Grand Valley: On Going to Hell, to France, and Back to Childhood

In the final, absorbing volume of his Three Paintings Trilogy, philosopher and critic Morgan Meis explores the art of Joan Mitchell and in particular one of her crowning achievements, the Grand Valley series. Mitchell, a twentieth-century American artist who found herself living and working in France, is a figure of contradictions-at once formidable and fragile, solitary and hungry for human connection.

The Grand Valley paintings, born from a memory not her own, become a focal point for unde...