An artist I know, who is also an accomplished writer, told me that art is just another language. I didn’t want to hear it; I wanted to believe that printmaking, painting and sculpture are infinitely more complicated than writing, and can capture inexpressible depths. But after seeing an exhibit of paintings that Joan Mitchell, the acclaimed abstract expressionist, completed in the last decade of her life, I might agree. The canvases are recognizably Mitchell’s, with an unbridled physical vitality. But they’re rendered in discrete, stripped-down forms that are set out as purposefully as words in a sentence. The paintings have an impact that’s less pictorial, less romantic, than her earlier works, and more succinctly structured. The brushwork is like calligraphy.

I was put off by the show’s title, Joan Mitchell: The Final Paintings, which seemed both sentimental and opportunistic. But there’s nothing soft or diminished about the work. These are huge, wall-sized canvases. And the brushstrokes, in their strength and certainty, are indelibly masculine. Is this assurance related to finality or mortality? I don’t think the artist suddenly felt she didn’t have any more time to waste with painterly frivolities. I think maybe she just arrived at a point where she didn’t want to fuss. After decades of serious work, she could just get down to business.