Joan Snyder Messes With the Grid

Joan Snyder, Summer Orange, 1970

Just saw an interesting review at the Brooklyn Rail of new paintings from Joan Snyder. I must admit that when I first started reading I said to myself, Wait, I thought that was Joan Mitchell! And I realized that I've spent decades mixing these two up. And it's not because they are both women artists and to me all female artists are the same. I swear! It's because they have the same first name, yes, but also that they are also both true masters of second wave abstraction and both work on a very large scale, i.e., an "heroic" scale, as they say, though I suppose this is said most often in relation to the work of male artists, who, I might add, are often said to be "larger than life," which usually just means they are assholes. But I digress.

In reading up on Joan Snyder I saw that her "stroke paintings" of the early 70s are considered especially influential, particularly for how they took on the device of "the grid" in a fresh way. I really like this approach to things. Just a few days ago I was thinking that one thing I really like in art is when the main form is symmetrical, yet produced freehand or loosely or just by eye so that the perfection is messed with a bit. That's the sweet spot -- for art and for life. Look, basically I play by the rules and my life proceeds on grid -- I work regular hours, show up on time, and meet my responsibilities. But I don't want my life to be rigid though, and I mess with things just enough so that I don't lapse into rigidity and rectitude, something which must be avoided at all costs, if one wishes to be truly alive. How I do so is a topic for another essay, but certainly one piece of it involves one's consciousness and the ways one resists conformity and excess reverence for authority or the opinion of others.

In music, we can look at someone like the Rolling Stones, who mixed great songs with a loose-as-hell approach to it. It's the looseness that makes it rock and roll. So the songs proceed on a pure chordal grid, often the I-IV-V progression of the 12 bar blues, which gives you something to hang your hat on. But on top of that is all sorts of wrongness of pitch and time that make it good, that brings the sex into it, if you will. I remember listening to the great hit by Rod Stewart and the Faces, Maggie May, and realizing that that could never be hit today. Why? Because it was too damn loose, obviously cut in just one take. No click track, no drum machine, no "programing." Sure, exactitude of beat has it's charms and uses. By sequencing everything to precise beats-per-minute, club DJs can keep a nice flow for the dancers. In fact, in this manner they are providing the grid that the people can then themselves go wild on. So there's that. But there really is something to be said for those old schools songs that breathed.

So, what is Joan Mitchell doing here? She is imbuing the grid with an almost absurd level of hotness and passion. It's got all that messy dripping and the colors are absolutely burning. I tell you what, the grid was not there to keep Joan on the straight and narrow. And maybe there's something, dare I say it, feminist there. This lady was not going to remain under anyone's control. The grid is just there so she could show us exactly how that is so, how she has chosen to deviate.