Blue II- Joan Miro
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The picture should be fecund. It must bring a world to birth.
-Joan Miro
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This is a thought that I often keep in mind. Art succeeds when it creates its own reality, when it brings a world to birth in the mind of those who behold it. The artist’s own belief in the reality of that new world is a large determinant in whether this birth takes place.
For myself, I almost always feel like I am taken to a different world, one as real as the world I inhabit in my human skin, by whatever is on the surface before me.
That is, when it works. Sometimes it is difficult to climb into that new world and that new reality that wants to be born on the surface is nothing more than a lifeless mishmash of paint blotches and lines. That is frustrating, to say the least.
But when it works, it is an easy glide into that new world with its own atmosphere and landscape, so familiar yet new and fresh in the nose and to the eye. It’s a thrill just to be in there for that time when taking on its lifeform.
Joan Miro (1893-1983) did such a thing with such ease. I am showing his Blue triptych today. I find it interesting how intimate and alive they feel as single images on a screen where their scale fades away. These could easily be small paintings. But when you see them as they are in the two photos below, you can see their size and how it magnifies their lifeforce.
They are a world unto themselves.
Take a look for yourself. I have also included a video of Dave Brubeck’s Bluette below that is played over a slideshow of Miro’s work.
Just good stuff.
Joan Miro Blue I
Joan Miro Blue III
What an amazing experience. The very second I read your title — “Miro Blues” — the great Brubeck “Take Five” began playing in my head. Of course you know why. The album art for that mono LP (one of the first I purchased for myself) was a Miro painting.
You’re right that seeing his work full-sized changes its effect, but even on an album cover, it sticks. If it can stick with a high school girl — well, what better testament to the power of art could there be?
Brubeck used several contemporary artworks on his albums and that Miro cover was a memorable one, for sure. Interesting how an image like that can tie itself to the music, for a high school girl or a middle aged man.