In addition to The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, Jane Livingston curated the exhibitions and authored the books Richard Avedon: Evidence and Richard Diebenkorn: A Retrospective, all at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Among her other books are The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963 (1992) and Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters & Sculptors (1987). Linda Nochlin is Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and author of many books including Representing Women (1999). Yvette Lee is Assistant Curator for Special Projects at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Joan Mitchell (1926-1992) was one of the few women among the first-rank abstract expressionist painters. She outpaced all but a handful of her male mentors and counterparts, while only Lee Krasner stands as a possible rival among her female counterparts. This illustrated volume accompanies an exhibition that spans Mitchell's entire career, from early works of 1951 until the year of her death. This book includes a wealth of paintings, both intimate and grand in scale, that reveal Mitchell's fierce dedication to her art and reflect both the struggles and the artistic triumphs she achieved with her distinctive vision of abstract expressionism. Jane Livingston draws on the artist's personal papers, including her journals and extensive correspondence, to provide an illuminating interpretation of the artist and her work. Linda Nochlin, who was a friend of Mitchell, discusses the artist's experience working in a field dominated by men. A third text by Whitney Museum of American Art curator Yvette Lee explores a distinctive and little-known suite of paintings entitled "La Grande Vallee", created in 1983-84. This book includes an exhibition history; an extensive artist bibliography of relat