[News Figures] 'Joan Mitchell' Featured in Louis Vuitton Advertisement

Louis Vuitton Illegally Uses Works by Contemporary Art Masters
Famous as a 'Narrative Abstract Painter' Influenced by Van Gogh

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Seung-gon] French luxury brand Louis Vuitton is facing controversy for unauthorized use of works by modern art master Joan Mitchell in its advertisements. As the Joan Mitchell Foundation takes legal action, interest in Joan Mitchell is growing.

Born in 1926 in Chicago, USA, Mitchell's father was a doctor and amateur painter, and her mother was a poet and magazine editor. Growing up in a wealthy environment, Mitchell lived a relatively peaceful life without the financial hardships commonly experienced by artists of the time. She showed interest in art and literature from a young age and completed a master's program at the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also studied at Columbia University in New York. She is a second-generation female artist who followed the first-generation abstract expressionist masters such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. She is known to have been greatly influenced by Van Gogh and Kandinsky.

Joan Mitchell's 1980 work 'Wood, Wind, No Tuba'. Photo by Yonhap News.

The vigorous brushstrokes felt in her paintings are related to Mitchell's upbringing, during which she excelled in sports from childhood. Mitchell reportedly showed exceptional talent in swimming and especially figure skating. Although she stood out by ranking 4th in a national competition, she had to stop sports due to a knee injury. However, her strong physical endurance was sublimated into her artwork, creating Mitchell's unique abstract paintings.

Mitchell's works, usually completed on canvases made by joining two panels with intense brushwork, are said to vary according to the artist's personal emotional fluctuations. For example, feeling death, despair, and melancholy in Van Gogh's late work "Wheatfield with Crows," Mitchell painted "No Birds" as an homage to Van Gogh. For viewers of Mitchell's works, seeing paintings that fully reflect her emotions means they can directly feel her feelings, thoughts, and philosophy.

Mitchell described her work as "a repetition of the feeling of Lake Michigan, or the sea, or the fields," and said, "My paintings are like poetry. That is the kind of painting I want to create." In this context, Mitchell's works are also called "narrative abstraction."

After moving to New York in 1949, Mitchell joined the "Artists' Club," a circle of abstract expressionists. She interacted with contemporaries such as Klein and Hofmann.

She held her first solo exhibition at the "New Gallery" in New York in 1952. Although she married an American publisher in 1949, they divorced in 1952. She then met Canadian painter Jean Paul Riopelle, and together they moved to France in 1955. From 1959 onward, she worked between Paris and New York, and from 1967, she resided in Bateau near Paris, focusing on her painting. She passed away in Paris in 1992.

Meanwhile, according to The New York Times (NYT), on the 21st (local time), the Joan Mitchell Foundation recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Louis Vuitton headquarters. The foundation claimed, "Despite repeatedly refusing requests to use Mitchell's works in handbag advertisements, Louis Vuitton appeared to have used at least three of Joan Mitchell's works in advertisements without permission." They also warned that if all advertisements using Mitchell's works are not stopped within three days, they will initiate legal action against Louis Vuitton for copyright infringement.