Joan Miró

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Joan Miró
Joan Miró, photo by Carl Van Vechten, June 1935
Birth name	Joan Miró i Ferrà
Born	20 April 1893(1893-04-20) Barcelona, Spain
Died	25 December 1983 (aged 90) Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Nationality	Spanish
Field	Painting, Sculpture, Mural, and Ceramics
Training	Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Llotja, and Escuela de Arte de Francesco Galí, Circulo Artístico de Sant Lluc, 1907–1913
Movement	Surrealism, Dada, Personal, Experimental
Influenced by	André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, and André Breton
Influenced	Arshile Gorky
Awards	1954 Venice Biennale Grand Prize for Graphic Work, 1958 Guggenheim International Award, 1980 Gold Medal of Fine Arts, Spain

Joan Miró i Ferrà (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983; Catalan pronunciation: [ʑuˈan miˈɾo]) was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist born in Barcelona.

Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeoise society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favor of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.^[1]

[edit] Biography

Born to the families of a goldsmith and watchmaker, the young Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris, France. There, under the influence of the poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with a sharp line. Generally thought of as a Surrealist because of his interest in automatism and the use of sexual symbols (for example, ovoids with wavy lines emanating from them), Miró’s style was influenced in varying degrees by Surrealism and Dada,^[2] yet he rejected membership to any artistic movement in the interwar European years. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, described him as "the most Surrealist of us all." Miró confessed to creating one of his most famous works, Harlequin's Carnival, under similar circumstances:

"How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..."^[3]

Joan Miro was originally part of the "Generation '27" a collective made up of Spanish poets, writers, painters and film makers that included Luis Bunuel, Miguel Hernandez, Jose Maria Hinojosa and Garcia Lorca. The latter three were murdered by Franco during Spain's fascist reign. Bunuel and a few other artists were able to flee for France and the US. Miro was among these exiles. It is also important to note that Miro's surrealist origins evolved out of "repression" much like all Spanish surrealist and majic realist work. Also, Joan Miro was well aware of Haitian Voodoo art and Cuban Santeria religion through his travels before going into exile. This led to his signature style of art making.

[edit] Career

Joan Miró, The Tilled Field, (1923–1924), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This early painting of a complex arrangement of objects and figures was Miró's first Surrealist masterpiece.^[4]

In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of grattage, in which he troweled pigment onto his canvases. Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929; their daughter Dolores was born July 17, 1931. Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940. In 1948–49, although living in Barcelona, Miró made frequent visits to Paris to work on printing techniques at the Mourlot Studios (lithographs) and at the Atelier Lacourière (engravings). A close relationship lasting forty years developed with the printer Fernand Mourlot and resulted in the production of over one thousand different lithographic editions.

In 1959, André Breton asked Miró to represent Spain in The Homage to Surrealism exhibition together with works by Enrique Tábara, Salvador Dalí, and Eugenio Granell. Miró created a series of sculptures and ceramics for the garden of the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, which was completed in 1964.

[edit] Experimental style

Miró was among the first artists to develop automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting, and thus, with André Masson, represented the beginning of Surrealism as an art movement. However, Miró chose not to become an official member of the Surrealists in order to be free to experiment with other artistic styles without compromising his position within the group. He pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism, to expressionism and Color Field painting.

Miró's oft-quoted interest in the assassination of painting is derived from a dislike of bourgeois art of any kind, used as a way to promote propaganda and cultural identity among the wealthy. Specifically, Miró responded to Cubism in this way, which by the time of his quote had become an established art form in France. He is quoted as saying "I will break their guitar," referring to Picasso's paintings, with the intent to attack the popularity and appropriation of Picasso's art by politics. [1]

"The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me." - Joan Miró, 1958, quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art

In an interview with biographer Walter Erben, Miró expressed his dislike for art critics, saying, they "are more concerned with being philosophers than anything else. They form a preconceived opinion, then they look at the work of art. Painting merely serves as a cloak in which to wrap their emaciated philosophical systems."^{[citation needed]}

Four-dimensional painting is a theoretical type of painting Miró proposed in which painting would transcend its two-dimensionality and even the three-dimensionality of sculpture.^{[citation needed]}

In the final decades of his life Miró accelerated his work in different media, producing hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also made temporary window paintings (on glass) for an exhibit. In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four-dimensional painting.

In 1974, Miró created a tapestry for the World Trade Center in New York City. He had initially refused to do a tapestry, then he learned the craft and produced several ones. His World Trade Center Tapestry was displayed for many years at World Trade Center building.^[5] It was one of the most expensive works of art lost during the attack of the twin towers.^[6]

In 1981, Miró's The Sun, the Moon and One Star — later renamed Miró's Chicago — was unveiled. This large, mixed media sculpture is situated outdoors in the downtown Loop area of Chicago, across the street from another large public sculpture, the Chicago Picasso. Miró had created a bronze model of The Sun, the Moon and One Star in 1967. The model now resides in the Milwaukee Art Museum.

[edit] Late mural

Joan Miró, La Leçon de Ski, 1966, Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas, Venezuela

One of Miró’s most important works in the United States is his only glass mosaic mural, Personnage Oiseaux^[7] (Bird Characters), 1972–1978. Miró created it specifically for Wichita State University’s Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art,^[8] Kansas. The mural is one of Miró’s largest two-dimensional projects, undertaken when he was 79 and completed when he was 85 years of age.^[9] Fabrication of the mural was actually completed in 1977, but Miró did not consider it finished until the installation was complete.^[10]

The glass mosaic was the first for Miró. Although he wanted to do others, time was against him and he was not able. He was to come to the dedication of the mural in 1978, but he fell at his studio in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and was unable to travel. His island home and studio in Mallorca served him from 1956 until his death in 1983.

The entire south wall of the Ulrich Museum is the foundation for the 28 ft by 52 ft (8.53 m x 15.85 m) mural, composed of one million pieces of marble and Venetian glass mounted on specially treated wood, attached to the concrete wall on an aluminum grid. A gift of the artist, donor groups paid for the fabrication by Ateliers Loire^[11] of Chartres, France, and for its installation. The Ulrich Museum also acquired the 5 ½ ft by 12 ft oil on canvas maquette for the mural, but it has since been sold to establish a fund to support the museum’s acquisitions and any repairs needed to the mural. The entire mural was originally assembled by one artisan at Ateliers Loire using Miró’s maquette as a guide.

Dona i Ocell, 1982, Barcelona, Spain.

Fabricated under Miró’s personal direction and completed in 1977, the 40 panels comprising the mural were shipped to WSU, and the mural was installed on the Ulrich Museum’s façade in 1978. Although it has received little recognition, the mural is a seminal work in the artist’s career, being one of Miró’s largest two-dimensional works in North America and the only type of its kind by the artist.^[9]

[edit] Livre d'Artist

Miró worked on several illustrated books. These were known as "Livre d'Artist."

One such work was published in 1974, at the urging of the widow of the French poet Robert Desnos titled "Les pénalités de l'enfer ou les nouvelles Hébrides" (The Penalties of Hell or The New Hebrides). It was a set of 25 lithographs, five in black, and the others in colors.

In 2006 the book was displayed in “Joan Miro, Illustrated Books” at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. One critic said it is “an especially powerful set, not only for the rich imagery but also for the story behind the book's creation. The lithographs are long, narrow verticals, and while they feature Miró's familiar shapes, there's an unusual emphasis on texture." The critic continued, “I was instantly attracted to these four prints, to an emotional lushness, that's in contrast with the cool surfaces of so much of Miró's work. Their poignancy is even greater, I think, when you read how they came to be. The artist met and became friends with Desnos, perhaps the most beloved and influential surrealist writer, in 1925, and before long, they made plans to collaborate on a livre d'artist. Those plans were put on hold because of the Spanish civil war and World War II. Desnos' bold criticism of the latter led to his imprisonment in Auschwitz, and he died at age 45 shortly after his release in 1945. Nearly three decades later, at the suggestion of Desnos' widow, Miró set out to illustrate the poet's manuscript. It was his first work in prose, which was written in Morocco in 1922 but remained unpublished until this posthumous collaboration. “

[edit] Late life and death

Miró received a doctorate honoris causa in 1979 from the University of Barcelona.

He died bedridden at his home in Palma, Mallorca on December 25, 1983.^[12] He suffered from heart disease and had visited a clinic for respiratory problems two weeks before his death.^[13]

Many of his pieces are exhibited today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and Fundació Joan Miró in Montjuïc, Barcelona; his body is buried nearby, at the Montjuïc cemetery. Today, Miró's paintings sell for between US$250,000 and US$17 million; the latter was the auction price for the La Caresse des étoiles on May 6, 2008 and is the highest amount paid for one of his works.^[14]

The Fundació Joan Miró Museum in Montjuïc, Barcelona

Pájaro lunar, 1966, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

[edit] Awards

Joan Miró i Ferrà won several awards in his lifetime. In 1954 he was given the Venice Biennale print making prize, in 1958 the Guggenheim International Award,^[15] and in 1980 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain.^[16]

In 1981, the Palma de Mallorca City Council established the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, housed in the four studios that Miró had donated for the purpose.^[17]

[edit] In pop culture

• In 2006, the Artists Rights Society (who manage Miró's copyright in the United States) asked Google to remove a customized version of its logo put up to commemorate the artist on what would have been his 113th birthday; the ARS alleged that portions of specific artworks under their protection had been used in the logos, and that they had been used without permission. According to Artist Rights Society President Theodore Feder, "There are underlying copyrights to the works of Miró, and they are putting it up without having the rights".^[18] Google complied with the request, but denied that there was any violation of copyright.

• Joan Miró is mentioned in Paulo Coelho's Eleven Minutes, several times in the fourth section of the novel and twice towards the end. The protagonist of Eleven Minutes relates his style of art to that of Miró's.

• A statue by Miró named "Moonbird" is found on the campus of Springfield University in The Simpsons's episode "That 90's Show". Both Homer and the preppy students mispronounce Miró's name.

• Dave Brubeck Quartet used a painting as an album cover in their 1960s album Time Further Out.

• Miró's work is referenced in the music video for Steely Dan's "New Frontier".

• One of the highest-profile chamber music groups in the United States, the Miró Quartet, was founded at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1995.

[edit] References

• Dupin, Jacques (1962). Joan Miró: Life and Work. Abrams. 

[edit] Sources

• Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró Life and Work, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publisher, New York City, 1962, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-19132
• Margit Rowell,Joan Miro -Selected Writing & Interviews, Da Capo Press Inc; New edition edition (1 Aug 1992) ISBN 978-0306804854

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joan Miró

• Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca (Joan and Pilar Miró Foundation in Mallorca)