La Cienega Area

An up-close and personal show of some half a dozen paintings by Joan Mitchell spans 30 years and reminds us that, at its best, Abstract Expressionism is timeless and energetic. What’s most touted about the New York school is its shoot-from-the-hip bravura; what needs to be stressed is that the folks who did the style justice possessed and exercised an instinctive sense of formal harmony and compositional and chromatic balance. As we’ve come to see in graduate schools and lofts everywhere, without these the Angst looks amateurish or phony. There’s at least one work in this show that demonstrates that even masters occasionally miss.

Several accomplished large paintings on view offer a chance to watch this ineffable process at work. For example, the large “Quiet Please” is a maelstrom of strident yellow daubs, thick and weighted with heavy lilac and midnight blue accents on the right, open and eased softly over a light blue field on the left. Such counterpoint is critical to Mitchell’s capacity to call up a scene or experience remembered in wholly abstract terms. Without the title, “Quiet Please” would still convey the sense of frenetic hubbub and quiet retreat. An untitled multi-paneled little painting from 1970 is noteworthy for its uncharacteristic solidity and the large and impressive “Your Boat” is signature Mitchell at its finest. (Manny Silverman Gallery, 800 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Jan. 7.)