![]() ![]() While it seems obvious now that the way out would be through her singular five-octave mezzo-soprano, singing was at first only a side bar, a hobby “for smoking money,” and so she did what most aspiring musicians people do, which is to go to art school and hate it. But then there’s the flip side: with no one recognizing her as a painter, there was no one to avenge but herself.īorn a Scorpio, and as Roberta Joan Anderson, on the grand, desolate Saskatchewan prairies, Joni wanted what all children want: an escape route. She didn’t-or she didn’t have the option to? No one, including her, has said-show in a major gallery, unlike many of her male counterparts from the ’60s, who parlayed their music success to art world mediocrity ( here’s looking at you, Bob Dylan). Of her 19 studio album covers, 12 are paintings by Mitchell, and most of these are self-portraits. “A painter derailed by circumstance.” What if we were to, for once, take her at her word? It either infuriated or amused everyone that she called herself a painter, not least of all because (1) it was hers alone, and (2) she didn’t care who was looking: a pop star needs a public, and the public expects the star’s surrender. Always have been,” she coolly informs Jian Ghomeshi in a 2013 interview, ashing a cigarette in his general direction. If the photographs were simultaneously what she had to give and how she wanted be perceived, her self-portraits-private, ignored-could be how she saw herself.įirst and foremost, how she saw herself was as a painter. It became harder to square and separate her persona from her private life. she had wanted to be a celebrity, but by the time holding a dulcimer and wearing long dresses the color of crushed lilacs became an obligation, not a game, her celebrity was no longer solely her decision. “I had no image of myself,” Joni will say of this early period, which, considering the hundreds of doe-eyed photographs that Googling “Joni Mitchell young” brings up, I can only take to mean “I couldn’t see myself in any of these images.” She had wanted to be a producer and a product-i.e. Mitchell’s 1969 self-portrait “Untitled” was the cover of her album “Clouds.” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |