I first met Joan Miro in the circle of the Greek publisher Tériade, who lived in Paris and was not only an author and witness of the Parisian art scene from the early part of the 20th century, but founded one of the most impressive art magazines and publishing houses called Editions Verve. His houses, from Varia in Lesbos, Greece, Saint Jean Cap Ferrat in the South of France, to his apartment on Rue de Rennes, were filled with artworks by most of the 20th century masters working in France. These included Matisse and Braque, Gris, Giacometti, Picasso, Chagall, and of course Miro. His publishing house on Rue Ferou in Paris, across from Man Ray’s studio, was brimming with archives, layouts, copies of La Revue Verve, and his elegant artists’ books.
In the circle of the multi-talented Tériade, Miro was a perfect fit. Trained as an academic painter, he refused to be pegged as “Surrealist” or “Abstractionist”. Although he moved back and forth between Spain and France he easily fit the charmed circle of the writers, poets and artists that Tériade was able to combine into his publications, beginning with Minotaure ( in collaboration with Christian Zervos in 1932-1936) then the Revue Verve, ( 1937-1960 and the Verve Editions, illustrated books , collaborations between modern poets such as Reverdy’s Le Chant des Morts, illustrated by Picasso, or the unforgettable Jazz, illustrated and calligraphied by Matisse. These books were masterfully designed; the illustrations were lithographies mostly by Fernand Mourlot, and stand today as outstanding, and for the most part unsurpassed examples of illustrated artist’s books.
Knowing Miro through Tériade, and spending time with the latter in Greece and in his Villa Natacha in St. Jean Cap Ferrat, was entering a world of dappled affinities. Henri Matisse decorated the dining room, a huge plane tree in stunning black and white ceramic tiles, and a joyous stained glass window. Marc Chagall painted two paintings which seemed to transport the rose garden into the sitting room.
A Laurens sculpture stood in the garden among the tiger lilies and the sublimely odorous lemon trees. Henri Cartier-Bresson documented this tiny jewel of a house on his frequent visits. And as a mano a mano, Miro designed the cover of the Verve edition of Les Européens, Cartier-Bresson’s photographies of Europe (1955). Joan Miro was a natural member of this exclusive club, and contributed to Verve subsequently in two separate books, Ubu Roi with the text by Alfred Jarry ( Verve 1966), and Ubu aux Baleares: the text was mischievously written and calligraphied by Miro, revealing his poetic talents : “the moon lands on the bottom of her man, and falls in love with the rainbow…”(Verve, prints by Mourlot, Paris 1971).
The young Miro escaped all caricatures: he was not a rebellions bohemian: he spent many years in painting academies in Barcelona, forging a lifelong friendship with the ceramist Juan Artigas, whose influence and friendship endured the length of his career. As the technical compostion of porcelain is endlessly complex, and Miro was by education and practice an investigator of matter, it is easy to understand that he became a practician of ceramics and pottery, and worked in this medium during his entire career.
His mother’s family and his future wife’s family all had roots in Mallorca, the unique island culture which seems to have had a strong influence., and where he spent the last years of his life. Perhaps the most interesting cultural ancestor, especially to the ever- curious Miro, was Raymond Llull. (1232-1316) He was one of the first intellectuals to write in Catalan, in a world whose thinkers were still writing in Latin. This vernacular thought seems to have influenced Miro in his early paintings, where he places nature as a high point and embellishes his pictures with farm animals, and curiously detailed constructions. The best known of these works, The Farm has long been considered an early masterpiece, although its rather vulgar portrayal of the farmyard and its animals could be considered at first degree quite hideous. It also found itself in the hands of his friend Ernest Hemingway. Miro had met with Hemingway in Paris, and described “boxing” with him, although with his small frame, he only came up to Hemingway’s lower chest. Another picture “The Tilled Field” embodied an incredible obsession with detail and colour, and its arcane construction has suscitated all kinds of reflexion as it its meaning. Miro himself said that these pictures summed up a certain phase in his life, but also provided the springboard for the next step. After 1925, of his huge pools of colour: “this is the colour of my dreams”. The three “Big Blue” paintings stand as witness to his ability to make complex statements in apparent simplicity.
Impeccably dressed, seldom without cravat, Miro defied the modernist conception of the unrecognized genius toiling in a garret. Balthus' painting of Miro and his daughter Dolores, portrays Miro standing in reserve, behind his daughter who is projected forward. He could easily be thought a civil servant. But this seemingly bourgeois painter revelled in his own secret world of mystery and magic. Not only did he manipulate paint and clay like a sorcerer, he totally controlled his images. There is no randomness to his work, and his incredibly controlled series called the Constellations is proof. Last exhibited as an ensemble at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, these equally sized, and totally constructed watercolors portray a deep sensibility, and quest to understand the cosmos.
Tériade quotes him in Minotaure:
“It is difficult for me to speak of my painting, because it is always born in a state of hallucination, provoked by some sort of shock, objective or subjective, and of which I am entirely irresponsible.”
However he adds
“ As to my means of expression, I force myself to attain the highest degree of clarity, power and aggressive plasticity, to thence attain the soul. “ ( Minotaure: 12 december N°3/4. 1933)
Miro’s eyes had an intensity seldom seen, they did not “devour” as did Picasso’s, they illuminated.. Under the guise of a serene and simple being lay the innards of a driven scientific investigator.
His long life ( 1893-1983) spanned all of the innovative artistic movements of the 2Oth century, his participation in theatre and dance, his creations in tapestry, ceramic murals, painting, sculpture and lithography secured him a place in the Odyssey of Modernism. He was Magus and Man rolled into one.
Sydney Picasso
