Joan Snyder (b. 1940)

JOAN SNYDER (b. 1940)
… And Acquainted with Grief [Diptych], 1997
Oil and mixed media on canvas, 48 x 108 in.

RECORDED: Mason Kline, “Joan Snyder,” Artforum (October 1998), p. 127 // Hayden Herrera, Joan Snyder (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005), p. 163 illus. in color 

EXHIBITED: Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY, April 25–June 12, 1998; Joan Snyder: New Paintings, p. 16 illus. in color // Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, June 2013–September 2020

EX COLL.: the artist; to Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York; to private collection, New Jersey, 1998 until the present

Many of Snyder’s paintings of the 1990s are requiems or altars for the dead: her parents died in 1992 and 1993; her partner Maggie Cammer’s parents died in 1995 and 1996; and she lost several friends to AIDS over the course of the decade. The title …And Acquainted with Grief references a verse in the Book of Isaiah, which is in both the Nevi’im of the Tanakh and the Old Testament of the Bible. The King James version of the Bible translates it into English as such: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). The wording of the phrase Snyder excerpted varies across different translations of both the Old Testament and the Nevi’im, with “grief” also appearing as “suffering,” “illness,” “sickness,” and “disease.” The lefthand panel of the diptych is dominated by the artist’s writing. Words like “breasts,” “moons,” “fields,” and “blossoms” call to mind Snyder’s “feminine” vocabulary, while “requiems,” “anxiety,” “nails,” and “pain” strike a darker note. The righthand panel features richly colored impasto flowers which fill in most of the composition save for a large vertical cut in the canvas. Cuts are a recurring motif in Snyder’s oeuvre, often appearing in paintings that deal with despair, anger, and female pain. The cut in …And Acquainted with Grief is stuffed with navy blue velvet, a material that appears in other works that explore death and loss. A square of dark green velvet is also among the text on the lefthand panel. There is one word written on the righthand panel, in the bottom right corner, in a light yellow that one could almost miss among the green of foliage and streaks of deep pink that drip from the flowers: “still.” If one reads the diptych from left to right, as a written narrative, perhaps Snyder is telling us that, even as she is “acquainted with grief,” flowers still bloom, and she still paints.