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Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work. This is just a use of space and form: it's an ambivalence of forms and space.
Joan Mitchell
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Joan Mitchell emphasizes that her abstract work is not just a style but a deliberate exploration of space and form.

In this quote, Joan Mitchell conveys her approach to abstract art as a significant engagement with the elements of space and form rather than simply adhering to a specific artistic style. She highlights the complexity and ambivalence in how various forms inhabit and interact within a space, suggesting that art is a thoughtful investigation into these relationships, rather than a mere aesthetic choice.

Themes

AbstractArtSpaceFormAmbivalence

In practice

Example use cases

During an art symposium to discuss the nature of abstract expressionism.

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