There is a distinct difference between a truly naive artist and one who is faux naive. True naïve is where you start: finding your way, exploring, experimenting, discovering your voice. The false naive is cunning, seeks approval under the guise of arrogance and superiority. Joan Miro it is the genuine article and remained so throughout its life. As a child, he played and canvas and paints were his tools. Louise Borgoiswho knew him, wrote of his character that he “was who he was and did not pretend or wish to be anyone else. He believed in himself and that is a great compliment. He really accepted himself. In the true naive there is no discrepancy between the person and the work. Miró was his work.”
This is also an apt description of Miro’s paintings, which exude a childlike wonder. Seeing the 50 in the Phillips Collection in “Miro and the United States,” you can’t help but be filled with the same wonder. I heard laughter in the gallery and excited discussion – a sure sign of liveliness. His are not the muted works of a Rothko or the shimmering spaces of a Frankenthaler, also featured in the show. Miró’s paintings burst with joy and excitement, and the joy is contagious. They just make you happy.
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“Miró and the United States“ |
But Miró is not scribbling; he is following the flow of his play with shapes, dots, splashes, sweeps, thin lines and swirls, dancing with color. He was in conversation with signs and alive to what they might represent. This is movement in two dimensions, and you follow, often dizzy with Miro’s invention. Take his constellations series. Created between 1940 and 1941, 22 pochoirs (hand-colored stencils) on paper of his oil and gouache paintings adorn a gallery in a straight line, uniform in size and frame. You travel down the line, seeing flying shapes that form fish, women, birds, acrobats, stars, ladders, snails. The paintings offered Miró a respite from the horrors of war, which had forced him to flee France after the German occupation in World War II. He prized them so dearly that he kept the first 10 in his bag as he fled. Those, and those to follow, were completed on his family farm in Montroig, Spain. The series first appeared in New York in Pierre Matisse Gallery, its dealer and all sold. Matisse wrote to Miro, “Opinion is unanimous, the public finds your exhibition impressive.” The abundance of work is not only in the paintings themselves, but also in their titles: Woman with blonde armpits brushing hair by starlight, Whistle song at midnight and rain in the morning, Women on the edge of a lake made iridescent by the passing of a swan, Pink twilight caresses the sex of women and birds. Over and over the work rolls like an evocation of joy, and the artist’s joy begets yours.
The Phillips Collection exhibit is accompanied by works by many of Miro’s contemporaries who were in New York during his visits to the United States, and his influence on their work is evident. According to the curator Elsa Smithgallshe and her team “looked for the best examples from artists who had a strong affinity with Miró’s creative methods, vision and/or aspects of his formal language. Our desire was to have a lively mix and include not only well-known artists such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollockand Louise Bourgeois with established connections to Miró, but also Lee Krasner, Peter Miller, Sonya SekulaAND Alice Trumbull Masonamong others, for whom the connection with Mirón has been less explored. An important aspect of the exhibition was greater visibility for the many women artists who engaged deeply with Miró’s work and ideas, but whose contributions have not always been foregrounded in narratives of postwar modernism.
There is an expansive, meandering, exploratory feel to the show, much like Miro’s work. You enter up a sweeping staircase into a large first room painted in New York State of Mind Blue, and pass through many smaller galleries that invite you to wander. “The exhibition brings together many voices that aim to embody the spirit of experimentation,” added Smithgall. “As visitors ascend the spiral staircase, they are struck by several sculptural works by Miró before encountering at the top of the stairs, two mobiles, a wire portrait of Miró and through the arch a small mobile stable – all from Alexander Calder. The exhibition unfolds chronologically with Miro’s art as the leitmotif in each room.”
Experiencing an artist’s work chronologically is always an added treat, as you can follow their evolution. A loving and wild self-portrait by Miró was reworked from 1937 to 1960. The final result captures the essence of man. Oil and pencil on canvas has a dense and dark graffiti background with its distinctive shapes, delicately shaded in fine detail. Above the top is a thick round black circle for the head with three fat black hairs, two large black circles for the eyes and two lines connecting two curves for the body, with small bright pink, blue, yellow and red circles. It is a child’s translation of a body – a true naïve.
This is a wide-ranging and important exhibition that provides an exciting display of Miró’s importance and influence on American artists. like Barnett Newman said after seeing an exhibition of Miró’s gouaches in 1945, “Miró is a pioneer in a new field that will change the face of art for many years to come.” His work continues to excite.
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