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Joan Miro Retrospective: A Quest for Historical Relevance
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11828 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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8 / 1987 |
1,453 Words |
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James F. Cooper
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At a very early point in the Joan Miro retrospective exhibit at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York one can pinpoint with some accuracy the moment that "Miro became Miro." Until 1924, his work had evidenced strong influences of Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Impressionism. That year, Miro took a dramatic step that still mystifies knowledgeable scholars. Even with the hindsight afforded by this exhibition of some 150 paintings, collages, and sculptures from the Miro Foundation in Barcelona and the Guggenheim collection, this remains a mystery.
Catalan Landscape (1924), guided by a logic that existed only within the borders of Miro's canvas, established a precedent in fantasy. There is little visual correlation with the real world, although Catalan Landscape contains recognizable objects in a Surrealist sense. Subsequently, Miro's career reflected many of the avant-grade styles of his generation and later ones (he died in 1983 at age ninety). But because of the large physical scale of his work, Miro too often relied upon a quick graphic solution involving several small shapes to offset the billboard-sized expanse of flat color.
In 1917, at the age of twenty-three, Miro came to Barcelona, the provincial capital city, from his birthplace of Montroig to see an exhibition of modern art. During the Middle Ages, the Spanish province of Catalonia had been a small independent Mediterranean country. Pro-French sympathy ran high during World War I, and the exhibition was dominated by the French artists Renoir, Matisse, Monet, and Vuillard.
Barcelona's cultural ambiance was heightened abnormally by the presence of Pablo Picasso and his companion Olga Koklova, who was touring with the Ballets Russe. Although born in the province of Andalusia, Picasso was regarded as a national hero by Catalonian patriots because he lived in Barcelona for several years prior to moving to Paris. Miro was impressed by a newly completed Cubist work by Picasso, El Passeig de Colom (1917), and Miro's The Balcony (1917) was clearly derivative.
Calligraphy of Leaf and Twig
In a letter that year to his friend Arxiu Ricart, Miro theorized that painters must constantly search for new solutions to pictorial problems or risk stylistic inertia and artistic complacency. "Right now what interests me most is the calligraphy of a tree or rooftop, leaf by leaf, twig by twig, blade of grass by blade of grass, tile by tile." Miro was anticipating the two criteria - a broad painting style, heightened by small decorative objects - that would characterize much of his art for nearly seventy years.
Montroig, the Church and the Village, painted the next summer at the family farm near the village of Montroig, was an odd amalgamation of medieval-like flat houses in the background and a Cubist fragmentation of fields in the foreground. The decorative qualities in the details of the foliage, however, hinted at the direction his art would soon take.
The following year in Paris, Miro met many of the leaders of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, but he was most attracted to the works of Giorgio De Chirico, Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, and Paul Klee. All of these representational artists evidenced a strong formal design that Miro felt comfortable
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