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 understanding Mitchell's approach to abstraction and landscape. Meis examines the pain and, at times, even violence within Mitchell's work, connecting it to her turbulent life and the critical interpretations of her art (including her struggle to be treated as seriously as her male peers).

As with the previous acclaimed volumes in this trilogy, Meis begins with a work of art and moves outward toward history, philosophy, and religion to provide context and insight. With his characteristically disarming wit and linguistic playfulness, Meis investigates the idea of the artist's self, drawing upon the mystical aspects of Carl Jung's thought and discovering parallels between Mitchell and obsessive creators like Claude Monet and Gertrude Stein.

Humorous and accessible, yet always willing to grapple with the most vexing and challenging issues of human finitude, The Grand Valley brings an innovative trilogy to a rich and satisfying conclusion.

Morgan Meis writes about art and culture for such magazines as n+1, Harper's, and Slate. He is a contributor at The New Yorker. Meis is the author of The Drunken Silenus, The Fate of the Animals, and Dead People (with Stefany Anne Golberg). He won the Whiting Award for Nonfiction in 2013. He has a PhD in philosophy from The New School for Social Research. He lives in Detroit.