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Joan Miro: A Retrospective (1934-1976)
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Le Jardin de Mousse |
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Even casual visitors to art museums easily recognize works by Joan
Miro (1893-1983). An early Surrealist
who also experimented with Cubist techniques, Miro's abstractions almost
always have recognizable figurative elements--birds, insects, animals, humans--and they
are characterized by whimsical charm, a sense of playfulness, and brilliant use of color.
Weinstein Gallery has assembled a first-rate selection of works by this
modern master, including paintings, works on paper, and original prints. Included are both
lesser known and landmark pieces such as Femme au Miroir whose bright primary
colors and use of black are markers that are frequently present in the artist's work.
These are joyous, cheerful works, rarely displaying contemporary angst, with the
occasional exception such as the
watercolor and crayon Femme dans la Nuit, whose head is turned
skyward with mouth open, seemingly railing at the universe. The connection to similar
images by Picasso is strong.
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Christ and the
Twelve Apostles c. 1100 |
While the flattened perspective used by some of Miro's
contemporaries (e.g., Matisse) is most often attributed to the influence of Japanese
prints, Miro found his inspiration closer to home. The Catalan chapels that he saw in the
Museum of Catalonia, in his native Barcelona, are characterized by flat, frontal,
cartoon-like images rendered in primary colors with black outlines. The sense of scale
amongst images in his works is also seen in the Catalan works, where size is more a
question of relative hierarchic importance than physical reality.
While the connection to children's drawings is unmistakable, the childlike quality of much
of Miro's work has the sophistication and charm of an artist knowingly drawing on such
imagery--it may be childlike, but it is anything but childish.
Miro worked in many print media, including etchings, pochoirs
(stencils), and lithography. He was often innovative and frequently combined different
techniques in one work. In the wonderful Parchment Serie III, a central gray
field was printed from an etched plate onto an irregularly shaped piece of parchment; the
artist then added his wonderful squiggles and blotches in gouache, including not only the
primary colors, but also parenthetical sweeps of purple.
Miro used yet another technique, carborundum (silicon carbide
engraving) combined with aquatint, in his droll La Femme aux Bijoux. Another
carborundum of note is Le Jardin de Mousse. Here Miro used two different plates
to get the effect of the elongated black blotch which breaks the rectangular frame of the
composition. The blotch is a delightfully audacious aberration which seems totally
appropriate both for what seems like the representation of the sweeping tail of a peacock
and for anchoring the composition.
Towards the end of his career Miro created prints on a monumentally
large scale such as Le Somnambule, a monumental aquatint etching measuring over
45 by 29 inches which is dominated by a large, central pair of unmatched eyes against a
dark and unusually textured background.
Miro especially took from Surrealism the idea of automatism,
which suggested that the artist let forms flow from the subconscious without inhibition.
It is, perhaps, the resulting ambiguities of his imagery, the merest suggestions of
reality, that allow the viewer in turn to respond so viscerally to his work--subconscious
meeting subconscious, if you will, leavened by wit and prodigious skill. That may just be
the secret of Miro's universal appeal.
May 29, 2002 - Arthur Lazere
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