At home with the world

by Shankar Chaudhuri

A Joan Miró exhibit currently underway at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC is a strong confirmation of why the Spanish painter occupies a storied space in modern art. A close read of these works on display makes it obvious that while they are infused with various artistic styles such as fauvism, surrealism, cubism and abstractionism, they stand out for their poetic insights, keen sensibilities and elegant simplicity. If these 60+ works are any indication, there’s a magnetic quality in most of Miro’s works in that a perceptive viewer yearns to see them over and over again.

The following is a review of several of Miro’s works from the MOMA exhibit.

Miró’s The Birth of the World (1925) serves as the centerpiece of the exhibit. Considered his masterpiece, the composition was far ahead of his time and largely stayed in the background until the 1950s when the abstract expressionist techniques of American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko came to find an appreciative audience.

With its images of a black kite, a red balloon and a cryptic figure stepping on the balloon’s yellow string against a dark background, the painting projects a feeling of space, depth and immensity. Obviously as the title indicates, the painting encapsulates a vision of the origin of the universe, “sort of genesis – the amorphous beginnings of life,” as the artist put it. The kite, balloon and the human figure are part of an interconnected world. With The Birth of the World Miró elevated modern painting to an imaginative space that it had never been before.

If The Birth of the World signaled a revolutionary concept in art, by contrast the Portrait of Enric Cristòfol Ricart (1917) with which the exhibition begins, has the imprint of artistic traditions such as Fauvism, Cubism and Japanese-inspired Impressionism. Miró juxtaposes bright, vibrant palette with a Edo-style print as a collage to achieve depth and convey an expanded artistic vision. Interestingly Miró signs the piece within a vertical block in the manner of Japanese artists. What stands out in the painting is the somewhat sad yet curious stare of Enric Cristòfol, Miró’s childhood friend and roommate. In the same year Miró composed this painting, he also did a similar painting of an academician titled Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (1917) which many consider to be a masterpiece of his early career. I personally found the portrait of Enric Cristòfol to be a more evocative composition because it conveys an immediacy and personal connection that is missing from the other painting where the character looks away from us.

In The Table (Still Life With Rabbit) 1920-21, Miró deftly uses a Cubist style but also breaks away from it by using a naturalistic setting with realistic images of a well plumed rooster, a curious rabbit looking at a dead fish amidst an array of freshly picked vegetables and a spring of vine. One can perceive this work as both Cubist and anti-Cubist.

When Pablo Picasso looked at Miró’s Still Life II (1922), he reportedly said, "This is poetry." Indeed, the simplicity of this work draws our attention. Three simple objects - a carbide lamp, an iron stand and a slice of tomato - are placed in an ambiguous space, rendering the scene with an open-ended interpretation.

Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird was painted by Miró in 1926. The "person" in the composition is a bald figure with a giant foot and the bird is presented with a flaming cock's comb. A dotted line shows the trajectory of the stone thrown at the bird. Set against the backdrop of a deep blue sea and dark green horizon, the work has a level of playfulness as well as timeless quality to it. The big foot firmly entrenched in the yellow sandy beach is symbolic of the figure’s earthly attachment.

*Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird (1920-21)*

In the Spring of 1928, during a trip to Belgium and Holland, Miró came in contact with the works of Dutch masters of the 17th-century that led to his composing of a series of paintings using the works of three Dutch artists. One of these, Dutch Interior I, was a deconstruction of the original work of a lute player by Hendrik Martenszoon Sorgh. While Sorgh depicted an idealized version of a lute player, Miró reconstructs the images in various forms and shapes providing them with a distinct identity and personality of their own.

Dutch Interior I (1928) — *Dutch Interior I* (1928)

As in the Dutch Interior I, Miró displays similar discretion in The Portrait of Mrs. Mills in 1750 (1929) by replacing the naturalism of the original British painting of the actress and singer by George Engelheart with a version that seems to accentuate the elegance of the character missing from the original work. In both Dutch Interior I and The Portrait of Mrs. Mills, Miró transforms the master paintings from fixed and idealized versions into open-ended and free-flowing creations using a biomorphic medium.

Miró painted Bather (1932) in which the contorted limbs are presented in vibrant colors against the backdrop of a saturated red sun over a deep blue sky. Here Miró renders his biomorphic language with a touch and feel dimension by his use of highly accentuated yellow hues and a sun-drenched scene.

''The smallest thing in nature is an entire world,'' Miró was reported to have said. ''I find all my themes in the fields and on the beaches. Pieces of anchors, rudders, starfish and tiller handles - they all turn up in my compositions. So do the heads of mushrooms and the 77 shapes of the calabash.'' Thus in his Hirondelle Amour (1933-34), imaginary forms in the shape of birds are interspersed with forms resembling feet, face and outstretched hands. The phrases “hirondelle” (swallow) and “amour” (love) are inscribed in the painting. Miró appears to be creating an imaginary universe where birds represent freedom that human species cherish and aspire for. There’s a distinct yearning to be both free and joyous in the composition.

It was probably with regard to pictures such as Hirondelle Amour that Giacometti, one of Miró's closest friends at the time it was painted, was later to say, "For me, Miró was synonymous with freedom — something more aerial, more liberated, lighter than anything I had ever seen before.”

In the early thirties, Miró also embarked on creating paintings based on collages. Painting (1933) is one of a series of canvases that he composed using industrial products and everyday objects. Under Miró’s brush the isolated industrial objects of the collage are transformed into interconnected biomorphic forms of luminous colors against a soft background.

But Miró’s works took a somber turn beginning in the mid-30s as the political climate in Spain and in Europe became ominous. His Rope and People, I could be perceived as a prescient work in terms of projecting the future direction of Europe. In the painting an affixed coil of heavy rope is surrounded by images of distressed male and female figures painted on cardboard in brightly colored oils. The rope at the front and center of the painting serves as a metaphor for the impending violence that was about to ensue from the totalitarian drift in Europe, and the volatile situation in Spain preceding the Civil War.

Miró’s works became more direct and pointed as the Civil War broke out in Spain and the Europe increasingly drifted towards the Second World War. His Still Life with Old Shoe Miro (1937) reflects his anguish over these developments. Just before composing it, Miró wrote from Paris: “We are living through a terrible drama, everything happening in Spain is terrifying in a way you would never imagine.” The anguish and foreboding are projected in the image of a fork piercing through an apple as well as through the presence of a forlorn shoe. The dark clouds and haziness of the overall painting heighten the ominous reality of the situation. Miró referred to this work as expressing a “profound and fascinating reality." This painting has been compared with Picasso’s Guernica for its depiction of tragedy. But unlike Guernica, Still Life with Old Shoe uses human absence to accentuate human trauma.

Following Still Life with Old Shoe, Miró produced Aidez L'Espagne or Help Spain (1937) as a design for a one-franc stamp to be sold for the benefit of the Republican Government in Spain. The work features a peasant in the yellow and red colors of Spanish and Catalan flags with a clenched fist in a Loyalist salute. At the bottom of the image are a few handwritten lines of stirring text: “In the present struggle I see, on the Fascist side, spent forces; on the opposite side, the people, whose boundless creative will gives Spain an impetus that will astonish the world.”

As the Civil War intensified in Spain and Europe increasingly get engulfed in an all out war, Miró made a series of eight oil washes on paper in black and red that collectively came to be known as “Constellations” (1938-41). These prints help to project a narrative of fear and oppression and stand in stark contrast of Miró’s earlier works made of vibrant colors and buoyant expressions.

Part of Constellations (1938-41) — *Part of Constellations* (1938-41)

After the war, Miró increasingly broadened the breadth of his work and began working on sculpture, tapestry and murals. One of the closing highlights of the exhibition is his Mural Painting (1950–51) that he was commissioned to create for a Harvard University dining room. The ornate figures in the painting are participants in a bullfight with a large bull in center flanked by a banderillero on the left and a matador on the right. In this painting Miró seems to have regained the vibrancy and ebullience that characterized his earlier works of intense colors and bold imageries.

Mural Painting (1950-51) — *Mural Painting* (1950-51)

It’s ironic that Miró is less well known in America than Dali or Picasso in spite of his long-standing and towering presence in the American art scene. MOMA has been the repository of one of the largest collections of Miró’s works for a long time. As early as 1941, it hosted the first major retrospective of his work followed by several others. Aside from composing the Mural Painting for Harvard University mentioned above, Miró also created the Wool and Hemp Tapestry that graced the lobby of the 2 World Trade Center from 1974 until the tower came down. Miró also ended up doing a tapestry titled Woman for the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., a ceramic mural for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, a mosaic mural (Bird People) for Wichita State University and various others.

Hopefully the MOMA retrospective would be an important step in elevating Miró’s artistic genius and trailblazing vision to a wider section of Americans.

Joan Miró's World