Siguiendo un orden cronológico, la exposición comienza con dos salas que giran alrededor de la tierra y el gran apego que Miró siempre sintió hacia el mundo rural catalán. La primera sala está articulada en torno a La masía, obra fundamental en la trayectoria del pintor. Pintado entre 1921 y 1922, el cuadro nos muestra al Miró que se distancia de la influencia demasiado marcada de Cézanne y los fauves. Encontramos en esta obra un inusual encuentro entre la simplificación de las formas y el detalle obsesivo. En la segunda sala observamos a un Miró vinculado ya al movimiento surrealista, y el persistente recuerdo de su Cataluña natal se ve ahora esquematizado, reducido a alusiones simbólicas. Quizá el ejemplo más sorprendente sea Cabeza de payés catalán, tema al que el artista volvió una y otra vez en busca de una cada vez mayor síntesis que lo llevó a rozar la abstracción.
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| Cabeza de payés catalán, 1925 |
Continúa la exposición con muestras del desasosiego que provocó en Miró la inestabilidad política en la España de la Segunda República. En efecto, en sus cuadros de los años 30 se aprecia una violencia, a veces una búsqueda de lo feo, que no asociamos con la imagen prototípica que tenemos del artista. En algunas de estas obras, el cambio de percepción se aprecia en el propio título, como Hombre y mujer frente a un montón de excrementos de 1935. Prima en estas obras una agresividad muy alejada del Miró inocente e infantil al que estamos acostumbrados. La sensación de amargura provocada, se nos dice en la exposición, por el clima de tensión social y política en la España de la época, se muestra en mujeres deformadas grotescamente o paisajes desolados. Se trata del Miró más expresionista, pero también de un Miró experimental, que hace una serie de pinturas sobre cobre y masonite, que utiliza el pastel, que hace incursiones en el collage o que combina materiales sobre un mismo soporte y parece anticipar la obra de uno de sus grandes admiradores, Antoni Tàpies.
En esta línea se sitúa la extraña y maravillosa Naturaleza muerta del zapato viejo de 1937, de la que Miró diría años más tarde que simbolizaba inconscientemente la convulsión trágica de la Guerra Civil que había estallado el año anterior. Es bien sabido que Miró se comprometió con la República, y en la exposición encontramos su célebre proyecto de sello, Aidez l’Espagne. También se exponen una serie de fotografías que recogen el proceso de creación de la obra El segador, que colgó en el pabellón español de la Exposición Internacional de París de 1937 y que se perdió tristemente al finalizar la misma. Queda constancia, sin embargo, de que Miró proyectó un lienzo en la misma línea denunciatoria y monumental que el Guernica de Picasso.
Aunque la historia del arte esté llena de casos semejantes, no deja de ser curioso que los momentos más angustiosos en la vida de un artista puedan coincidir con el punto de mayor lucidez creativa. Tal es el caso de Miró que, mientras teme por su vida en la Francia ocupada y huye a la España franquista, crea su formidable serie de las Constelaciones. Creo que es digno de resaltar cómo responde Miró a la incertidumbre y al temor con una serie de gouaches tan bellos y delicados, acallando todos los ecos violentos de la guerra. Su forma de abordar las obras con una caligrafía e inocencia infantiles nos remite inevitablemente a uno de los héroes silenciosos de la modernidad, Paul Klee.
Podemos afirmar tranquilamente que las Constelaciones marcan el punto definitivo de madurez en la obra de Miró, y así nos lo indica la propia exposición al colocarlas, aproximadamente, a la mitad del recorrido. El pintor ha dado con una manera de pintar totalmente personal que nos permite saber con certeza cuándo nos encontramos ante un Miró. Si en sus comienzos buscaba representar su apego por la tierra, ahora eleva su vista hacia los pájaros y las estrellas. Miró querrá establecer un vínculo entre ambos mundos, y de ahí la “escalera de la evasión” que da título a la exposición, presente ya en un bello cuadro de 1926 titulado Perro ladrando a la luna.
En un artículo escrito hace un par de años, Mario Vargas Llosa hacía una consideración sobre Miró que puede inquietar a quien se disponga a visitar una exposición del pintor: “Miró fue un buen pintor en sus inicios, quién lo duda, e introdujo en la pintura moderna una inocencia juguetona, infantil y traviesa, que transpiraba poesía y buen humor. Pero qué pronto perdió el ímpetu creador, el espíritu arriesgado, y comenzó a repetirse y a imitarse hasta convertirse en una industria cacofónica, artificiosa y falsamente naif”. Aunque puedo entender las razones en las que se basa para afirmarlo, no creo que Vargas Llosa sea del todo justo. Estamos acostumbrados al Miró quizá excesivamente público, a las esculturas al aire libre y a los grandes murales que, a base de repetición, se convierten en algo banal. Ciertamente, es muy probable que su iconografía haya sido –y siga siendo– sobreexplotada, pero creo que merece la pena detenerse a pensar que dicha iconografía es fruto de un gran ingenio y que es difícilmente superable una vez alcanzada.
En todo caso, lo que la presente exposición viene a demostrar es que sí hubo vida después de las Constelaciones. Miró fue permeable, por ejemplo, a las enseñanzas del arte gestual de Oriente y observó con atención la nueva pintura de los jóvenes de Nueva York, para quienes, por otro lado, él era una figura capital. Hay dos grandes trípticos que se exponen en la segunda parte de la muestra que chocan con la acomodada concepción que se tiene de la pintura de Miró. En primer lugar, Pintura sobre fondo blanco para la celda de un solitario, de 1968, es un impresionante ejercicio de vaciamiento. El momento de madurez final de los grandes maestros suele reflejarse en un despojamiento de anécdota y artificiosidad semejante a éste de Miró. Cada uno de estos tres enormes lienzos blancos es atravesado por una fina línea negra, algo que, como dice Adrian Searle, pudiera parecer una insensatez pero que, sin embargo, funciona. El otro tríptico al que me refería es La esperanza del condenado a muerte, que Miró aseguró haber terminado al ordenarse la ejecución del anarquista Salvador Puig Antich por parte del gobierno de Franco en febrero de 1974. Estos tres lienzos siguen prácticamente igual de despoblados que los anteriores, pero se suma en cada uno de ellos una sutil pero potente mancha de color. No creo que pueda decirse que esta sea la obra de un pintor conservador que vive de las rentas de su trabajo anterior.
Hemos de asumir que una exposición retrospectiva, por grande que sea, casi nunca va a recoger todas y cada una de las obras maestras de un artista. Partiendo de esta base, es al menos deseable que una retrospectiva –si es que verdaderamente lo es– aporte un repaso riguroso de una trayectoria creativa, algo que una mera acumulación de piezas geniales puede no conseguir. Yo, desde luego, salgo de esta exposición con la convicción de que conozco un poco mejor a Joan Miró.
Joan Miró. La escalera de la evasión. Fundación Joan Miró. Parc de Montjuïc s/n, Barcelona. Hasta el 18 de marzo de 2012.
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| La esperanza del condenado a muerte I, II y III, 1974 |
Miró: above the earth, below the stars
It’s impossible to cover the entire work of an artist in a single exhibition, especially if it’s such a prolific and relevant one as Joan Miró (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983). What I think the current retrospective at Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró does achieve is to clearly establish the different stages the Catalan painter’s oeuvre went through. It’s undeniable that more than one key work is missing here, but the current show is a comprehensive attempt to reflect the evolution of Miro’s career, with constant references to the artistic and historical context in which it evolved.
Following a chronological order, the exhibition begins with two rooms dedicated to Miro’s profound love towards the Catalan rural life of his youth. The central piece of the first room is La masía (Catalan for “farm”), a fundamental work in the painter’s career. Executed between 1921 and 1922, the painting shows us how Miró distanced himself from the oppressive influences of Cézanne and the Fauves that had marked his previous output. In this work we find an unusual combination of formal simplification and obsessive detail. The second room presents us with a Miró fully associated with the Surrealist movement, and the persistent memories of his native Catalonia are now condensed and reduced to mere symbolic references. Possibly the most surprising example is Cabeza de payés catalán (Head of a Catalan Peasant), a theme to which the artist returned again and again in search of an ever growing synthesis that nearly led him to abstraction.
The exhibition continues with the state of unease that the political instability of the Spanish Second Republic produced in Miró. In his paintings of the 1930’s we find violence, and a sometimes conscious ugliness, which we do not associate with the archetypal image we have of the artist. In some of these works, this change of perception is present in the very same title, such as Hombre y mujer frente a un montón de excrementos (Man and Woman Before a Heap of Excrements) from 1935. What prevails in these paintings is an aggressiveness which strongly contrasts with the naive, childlike Miró we are accustomed to. This is the most expressionist version of Miró, but it’s also an experimental Miró who paints a series of works on copper and masonite, who uses pastel, who ventures into collage, or who combines various materials on one same canvas, anticipating the work of one of his greatest admirers, Antoni Tàpies.
In this context we encounter the strange and marvellous Naturaleza muerta del zapato Viejo (Still Life with Old Shoe) from 1937, of which Miró would say years later that it unconsciously symbolised the tragic convulsion of the Spanish Civil War which had begun a year earlier. It is common knowledge that Miró openly supported the Republic, and in the exhibition we find his famous project for a stamp he designed in France, Aidez l’Espagne. There is also a series of photographs which document the making of the painting El segador (The Harvester), which hung at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937 and was sadly lost. The photographs serve as evidence that Miró created a painting along the same lines of denunciation and monumentality of Picasso’s Guernica.
Even though art history is full of similar cases, it’s nevertheless curious to witness how the most unstable stage of an artist’s life can coincide with the peak of his creative genius. This is the case of Miró, who, while fearing for his life in occupied France and fleeing to Franco’s Spain, created his formidable series of Constellations. It’s truly remarkable to see how Miró responded to these moments of uncertainty and fear with a series of such beauty and delicacy, silencing the violent echoes of war. His way of approaching the pieces with childlike calligraphy and innocence inevitably reminds us of one of the silent heroes of Modern Art, Paul Klee.
We can say without doubt that the Constellations mark the point of definitive maturity in Miro’s oeuvre, and the exhibition tells us so by placing them half way through the show. The painter has found a way of painting that is completely personal, creating a completely identifiable language. If in his first works he wanted to reflect the love for his homeland, he now looks upwards, at the birds and the stars. Miró wants to establish a bond between the two worlds – the “stairway of evasion” which gives the exhibition its title and that is already present in a beautiful painting of 1926 named Dog barking at the moon.
In an article written two years ago, Mario Vargas Llosa expressed an opinion about Miró that might disturb somebody willing to visit an exhibition by the painter: “Miró was a good painter in his beginnings –who can doubt it? – and he introduced a playful, childish, naughty innocence in modern painting that transpired poetry and good humour. But how quickly he lost his creative impulse, his brave spirit, and began to repeat and imitate himself, becoming a cacophonous, artificial and falsely naive industry.” Though I can understand his reasons for saying this, I don’t think Vargas Llosa is completely fair. We are used to the maybe excessively public Miró, to the open air sculptures and the big murals that, through repetition, turn into something banal. Certainly, his iconography has probably been –and still is– overexploited, but I think it’s worth mentioning that this iconography is the result of great talent and that it is very difficult to surpass once achieved.
In any case, what the current exhibition goes to show is that there was life beyond the Constellations. Miró was permeable, for example, to the teachings of Oriental gestural art, and he carefully observed the breakthroughs of the young New York painters, who, by the way, had Miró as one of their key inspirers. The last part of the exhibition hosts two great triptychs that contradict the comfortable conception we have of Miro’s painting. In first place, 1968’s Pintura sobre fondo blanco para la celda de un solitario (Painting on White for the Cell of a Solitary Man) is an impressive example of how to empty a canvas. The ultimate maturity of great masters is usually revealed by the banishing of all anecdote or artificiality, similar to what we see in this triptych by Miró. Each one of these enormous white canvases is crossed by a thin black line, something that, as Adrian Searle suggests, may seem foolish but actually works. The other triptych I was referring to was La esperanza del condenado a muerte (The Hope of a Man Condemned to Death), which Miró assured he finished when the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich was sentenced to death by Franco’s government in February, 1974. These three canvases are practically as empty as the others, but with the addition of a spot of colour, subtle but powerful. I don’t think we can say these are the works of a conservative painter that lives off his past glory.
We must assume that a retrospective exhibition, no matter how big, will practically never show each and every masterpiece an artist ever produced. Taking this into account, it is at least desirable for the retrospective –if it really deserves that title– to provide a rigorous overview of an artistic career, something we might miss if we are presented only with a succession of brilliant pieces. I, for one, can surely claim that I leave this exhibition with the conviction that I now know Joan Miró a little better.
Following a chronological order, the exhibition begins with two rooms dedicated to Miro’s profound love towards the Catalan rural life of his youth. The central piece of the first room is La masía (Catalan for “farm”), a fundamental work in the painter’s career. Executed between 1921 and 1922, the painting shows us how Miró distanced himself from the oppressive influences of Cézanne and the Fauves that had marked his previous output. In this work we find an unusual combination of formal simplification and obsessive detail. The second room presents us with a Miró fully associated with the Surrealist movement, and the persistent memories of his native Catalonia are now condensed and reduced to mere symbolic references. Possibly the most surprising example is Cabeza de payés catalán (Head of a Catalan Peasant), a theme to which the artist returned again and again in search of an ever growing synthesis that nearly led him to abstraction.
The exhibition continues with the state of unease that the political instability of the Spanish Second Republic produced in Miró. In his paintings of the 1930’s we find violence, and a sometimes conscious ugliness, which we do not associate with the archetypal image we have of the artist. In some of these works, this change of perception is present in the very same title, such as Hombre y mujer frente a un montón de excrementos (Man and Woman Before a Heap of Excrements) from 1935. What prevails in these paintings is an aggressiveness which strongly contrasts with the naive, childlike Miró we are accustomed to. This is the most expressionist version of Miró, but it’s also an experimental Miró who paints a series of works on copper and masonite, who uses pastel, who ventures into collage, or who combines various materials on one same canvas, anticipating the work of one of his greatest admirers, Antoni Tàpies.
In this context we encounter the strange and marvellous Naturaleza muerta del zapato Viejo (Still Life with Old Shoe) from 1937, of which Miró would say years later that it unconsciously symbolised the tragic convulsion of the Spanish Civil War which had begun a year earlier. It is common knowledge that Miró openly supported the Republic, and in the exhibition we find his famous project for a stamp he designed in France, Aidez l’Espagne. There is also a series of photographs which document the making of the painting El segador (The Harvester), which hung at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937 and was sadly lost. The photographs serve as evidence that Miró created a painting along the same lines of denunciation and monumentality of Picasso’s Guernica.
Even though art history is full of similar cases, it’s nevertheless curious to witness how the most unstable stage of an artist’s life can coincide with the peak of his creative genius. This is the case of Miró, who, while fearing for his life in occupied France and fleeing to Franco’s Spain, created his formidable series of Constellations. It’s truly remarkable to see how Miró responded to these moments of uncertainty and fear with a series of such beauty and delicacy, silencing the violent echoes of war. His way of approaching the pieces with childlike calligraphy and innocence inevitably reminds us of one of the silent heroes of Modern Art, Paul Klee.
We can say without doubt that the Constellations mark the point of definitive maturity in Miro’s oeuvre, and the exhibition tells us so by placing them half way through the show. The painter has found a way of painting that is completely personal, creating a completely identifiable language. If in his first works he wanted to reflect the love for his homeland, he now looks upwards, at the birds and the stars. Miró wants to establish a bond between the two worlds – the “stairway of evasion” which gives the exhibition its title and that is already present in a beautiful painting of 1926 named Dog barking at the moon.
In an article written two years ago, Mario Vargas Llosa expressed an opinion about Miró that might disturb somebody willing to visit an exhibition by the painter: “Miró was a good painter in his beginnings –who can doubt it? – and he introduced a playful, childish, naughty innocence in modern painting that transpired poetry and good humour. But how quickly he lost his creative impulse, his brave spirit, and began to repeat and imitate himself, becoming a cacophonous, artificial and falsely naive industry.” Though I can understand his reasons for saying this, I don’t think Vargas Llosa is completely fair. We are used to the maybe excessively public Miró, to the open air sculptures and the big murals that, through repetition, turn into something banal. Certainly, his iconography has probably been –and still is– overexploited, but I think it’s worth mentioning that this iconography is the result of great talent and that it is very difficult to surpass once achieved.
In any case, what the current exhibition goes to show is that there was life beyond the Constellations. Miró was permeable, for example, to the teachings of Oriental gestural art, and he carefully observed the breakthroughs of the young New York painters, who, by the way, had Miró as one of their key inspirers. The last part of the exhibition hosts two great triptychs that contradict the comfortable conception we have of Miro’s painting. In first place, 1968’s Pintura sobre fondo blanco para la celda de un solitario (Painting on White for the Cell of a Solitary Man) is an impressive example of how to empty a canvas. The ultimate maturity of great masters is usually revealed by the banishing of all anecdote or artificiality, similar to what we see in this triptych by Miró. Each one of these enormous white canvases is crossed by a thin black line, something that, as Adrian Searle suggests, may seem foolish but actually works. The other triptych I was referring to was La esperanza del condenado a muerte (The Hope of a Man Condemned to Death), which Miró assured he finished when the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich was sentenced to death by Franco’s government in February, 1974. These three canvases are practically as empty as the others, but with the addition of a spot of colour, subtle but powerful. I don’t think we can say these are the works of a conservative painter that lives off his past glory.
We must assume that a retrospective exhibition, no matter how big, will practically never show each and every masterpiece an artist ever produced. Taking this into account, it is at least desirable for the retrospective –if it really deserves that title– to provide a rigorous overview of an artistic career, something we might miss if we are presented only with a succession of brilliant pieces. I, for one, can surely claim that I leave this exhibition with the conviction that I now know Joan Miró a little better.
Joan Miró. The Stairway to Evasion. Fundació Joan Miró. Parc de Montjuïc s/n, Barcelona. Finishes 18th March 2012.
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