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Lot Essay
During the 1920s Miró usually split his time between Paris and his family's estate at Montroig, near Barcelona. While he was in the French capital he had access to a studio at 45 rue Blomet, where André Masson was his next door neighbor. Their studios became the meeting place for a number of poets and writers who were affiliated with the Dada movement. With the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto in October 1924 André Breton strove to attract important artists and writers to the Surrealist banner. The participants in the discussions at 45 rue de Blomet were quick to enlist.
The periodical La Révolution Surréaliste illustrated paintings by Miró in early 1925, and the artist had a one-man exhibition at Pierre Loeb's Galerie Pierre in June that turned out to be a succès de scandale. The poet Benjamin Péret supplied the catalogue introduction, which he titled "Hair in your Eyes." Danseuse espagnole (lot 116) was included in this show. Miró also contributed several works, including Carnaval d'arlequin (fig. 1) to the first Surrealist group exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in November.
"Miró was now entirely integrated with the surrealist movement. Miró's adherence was always rather casual, his attitude a trifle aloof. He subscribed to the ethical and aesthetic principles of Surrealism and was in profound agreement with its goals in these domains, but he never felt obliged to go along with matters of practical or political action or with respect to technical painting issues. He did not attend the meetings of the group regularly or share in all its demonstrations and other activities. He was a believer, but practicing was another matter. He always seemed more of a fellow traveler than an active Surrealist" (J. Dupin, Miró, New York, 1993, p. 116).
Of most interest to the Surrealists was Miró's uniquely personal manner of morphing his subjects into ideographs, a process that enables these objects to interact pictorially and metaphorically with each other to arrive at new, unexpected meanings.
Miró realized that the sheer exuberance and density of incident in Carnaval d'arlequin would be hard to sustain from picture to picture, and in 1925 he turned to creating paintings that display greater austerity in their manipulation of subjects and pictorial means. One large group includes his so-called "oneiric" or dream pictures. In these the artist places his forms, which are distilled to their very essence, on vague, thinly washed monochrome grounds. The flat economy of these forms owes much to the example of Jean Arp's cut-out shapes (see lots 2, 4 and 15). Miró met Arp in late 1925, soon after the latter arrived in Paris from Cologne to be at the center of Surrealist activity.
Miró was preoccupied with his oneiric paintings while working in Paris in 1925 and during the winters of 1926 and 1927. While he lived in the city, he could rarely afford even one proper meal each day, and he would hallucinate as a result of hunger and overwork. Miró returned home to Montroig during the summers of 1926 and 1927. Amid the flat valleys and rugged hills where he grew up, and no longer burdened by straitened circumstances, the artist painted a smaller group of paintings, only seven in number during each of the two summers, in which figures are set in a landscape. "When he was in Montroig he put to the test of external reality everything he had extracted from his own inner resources. This did not mean a return to the motif, to descriptive painting, but was a response to the earth, to 'the absolute of nature', which had all winter been giving consistency, weight and color to his most purely lyrical creations [the oneiric paintings]. He felt the need to get his feet on the ground again after so protracted a journey, flight or free fall through the dimensionless, limitless space of a world as yet unformed" (ibid., p. 131).
The visionary landscapes painted at Montroig in 1926 and 1927, including the present work, are among the most strikingly memorable of Miró's early compositions. Some of the paintings contain only several images, and this spareness of subject matter, set against minimal but resonantly colored landscape forms, highlights their dramatic and cogent simplicity. "Color comes back with a strength and brilliance it never had in his work before" (ibid., p. 131).
In each of these pictures Miró introduces a horizon line to divide the background into dual realms of earth and sky. This step places these compositions in the context of the external world, in contrast to wholly internalized and subjective state seen in the oneiric series. In Chien aboyant à la lune (fig. 2), the ladder which Miró placed on the left side of Carnaval d'arlequin is again put to use, and this time, as in Jacob's dream in Genesis, 28-12, it unites heaven and earth, mirroring the relationship between the dog (a terrestial creature) and the moon in the heavens. The unity between a cosmic event and a humble earthly creature is again seen in Paysage (Le Lièvre; fig. 3), in which a hare is transfixed by the sight of a spiraling comet.
The present work was painted during the summer of 1927 and falls within the second series of landscape paintings. It treats Miró's familiar themes of sexuality and fertility. An ostrich stands bolt upright above her egg, her head arched back, prepared to confront a black-and-white skunk which threatens to steal her egg. A swan drifts by on the river. Both the skunk and swan contain phallic shapes that indicate they are male symbols, and indeed the water of the river itself is a male element. The ostrich is a female earth symbol; in the presence of competing male interests she must protect her unborn offspring. Within the elliptical dynamic of Surrealist imagery, interpretation may provide some indication of the shape of the artist's thoughts, but must necessarily fall short of stating a specific narrative. Miró did not give titles beyond the simple appellation "Paysage" to the 1927 landscapes; the subtitles which supply useful hints only afterwards came into use.
In the landscapes of 1926 and 1927 Miró arrives at a fully mature solution to the problem of form. The imagery in paintings such as Portrait de Mme K. and Danseuse espagnole derives from the analytical breakdown of the subject into individual fetish-like elements, and of allowing parts to stand for aspects of the whole. Each of the creatures in Paysage, however, is a wholly biomorphic entity. "The forms share the new spirit of affirmation, being more impacted and more sharply outlined. Miró's marvelous line darts forth joyously, to bring fantastic creatures to life in its toils, vibrating without alteration in the transparent air. A calm gentleness prevails in all these landscapes, a kind of fierce wholesomeness; mystery is no longer made manifest, but dissolved in the air, unleashed in the arabesque, concealed behind a gentle humor" (ibid., p. 131).
In letters dated 21 September 1953, 2 November 1953 and 9 January 1954, James Johnson Sweeney of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York attempted to acquired the present work from René Gaffé for the Museum's permanent collection.
Please note this painting has been requested for the following upcoming exhibitions: Joan Miró: 1918-1945 to be held at the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, July-September 2002 and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, October-December 2002; Joan Miró: Snail Woman Flower Star to be held at the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf, July-October 2002; and Rétrospective Joan Miró to be held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris, 2004.
(fig. 1) Joan Miró, Carnaval d'arlequin, 1924-1925.
Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001
(fig. 2) Joan Miró, Chien aboyant à la lune, 1926.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001
(fig. 3) Joan Miró, Paysage (Le Lièvre), 1927.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001
The periodical La Révolution Surréaliste illustrated paintings by Miró in early 1925, and the artist had a one-man exhibition at Pierre Loeb's Galerie Pierre in June that turned out to be a succès de scandale. The poet Benjamin Péret supplied the catalogue introduction, which he titled "Hair in your Eyes." Danseuse espagnole (lot 116) was included in this show. Miró also contributed several works, including Carnaval d'arlequin (fig. 1) to the first Surrealist group exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in November.
"Miró was now entirely integrated with the surrealist movement. Miró's adherence was always rather casual, his attitude a trifle aloof. He subscribed to the ethical and aesthetic principles of Surrealism and was in profound agreement with its goals in these domains, but he never felt obliged to go along with matters of practical or political action or with respect to technical painting issues. He did not attend the meetings of the group regularly or share in all its demonstrations and other activities. He was a believer, but practicing was another matter. He always seemed more of a fellow traveler than an active Surrealist" (J. Dupin, Miró, New York, 1993, p. 116).
Of most interest to the Surrealists was Miró's uniquely personal manner of morphing his subjects into ideographs, a process that enables these objects to interact pictorially and metaphorically with each other to arrive at new, unexpected meanings.
Miró realized that the sheer exuberance and density of incident in Carnaval d'arlequin would be hard to sustain from picture to picture, and in 1925 he turned to creating paintings that display greater austerity in their manipulation of subjects and pictorial means. One large group includes his so-called "oneiric" or dream pictures. In these the artist places his forms, which are distilled to their very essence, on vague, thinly washed monochrome grounds. The flat economy of these forms owes much to the example of Jean Arp's cut-out shapes (see lots 2, 4 and 15). Miró met Arp in late 1925, soon after the latter arrived in Paris from Cologne to be at the center of Surrealist activity.
Miró was preoccupied with his oneiric paintings while working in Paris in 1925 and during the winters of 1926 and 1927. While he lived in the city, he could rarely afford even one proper meal each day, and he would hallucinate as a result of hunger and overwork. Miró returned home to Montroig during the summers of 1926 and 1927. Amid the flat valleys and rugged hills where he grew up, and no longer burdened by straitened circumstances, the artist painted a smaller group of paintings, only seven in number during each of the two summers, in which figures are set in a landscape. "When he was in Montroig he put to the test of external reality everything he had extracted from his own inner resources. This did not mean a return to the motif, to descriptive painting, but was a response to the earth, to 'the absolute of nature', which had all winter been giving consistency, weight and color to his most purely lyrical creations [the oneiric paintings]. He felt the need to get his feet on the ground again after so protracted a journey, flight or free fall through the dimensionless, limitless space of a world as yet unformed" (ibid., p. 131).
The visionary landscapes painted at Montroig in 1926 and 1927, including the present work, are among the most strikingly memorable of Miró's early compositions. Some of the paintings contain only several images, and this spareness of subject matter, set against minimal but resonantly colored landscape forms, highlights their dramatic and cogent simplicity. "Color comes back with a strength and brilliance it never had in his work before" (ibid., p. 131).
In each of these pictures Miró introduces a horizon line to divide the background into dual realms of earth and sky. This step places these compositions in the context of the external world, in contrast to wholly internalized and subjective state seen in the oneiric series. In Chien aboyant à la lune (fig. 2), the ladder which Miró placed on the left side of Carnaval d'arlequin is again put to use, and this time, as in Jacob's dream in Genesis, 28-12, it unites heaven and earth, mirroring the relationship between the dog (a terrestial creature) and the moon in the heavens. The unity between a cosmic event and a humble earthly creature is again seen in Paysage (Le Lièvre; fig. 3), in which a hare is transfixed by the sight of a spiraling comet.
The present work was painted during the summer of 1927 and falls within the second series of landscape paintings. It treats Miró's familiar themes of sexuality and fertility. An ostrich stands bolt upright above her egg, her head arched back, prepared to confront a black-and-white skunk which threatens to steal her egg. A swan drifts by on the river. Both the skunk and swan contain phallic shapes that indicate they are male symbols, and indeed the water of the river itself is a male element. The ostrich is a female earth symbol; in the presence of competing male interests she must protect her unborn offspring. Within the elliptical dynamic of Surrealist imagery, interpretation may provide some indication of the shape of the artist's thoughts, but must necessarily fall short of stating a specific narrative. Miró did not give titles beyond the simple appellation "Paysage" to the 1927 landscapes; the subtitles which supply useful hints only afterwards came into use.
In the landscapes of 1926 and 1927 Miró arrives at a fully mature solution to the problem of form. The imagery in paintings such as Portrait de Mme K. and Danseuse espagnole derives from the analytical breakdown of the subject into individual fetish-like elements, and of allowing parts to stand for aspects of the whole. Each of the creatures in Paysage, however, is a wholly biomorphic entity. "The forms share the new spirit of affirmation, being more impacted and more sharply outlined. Miró's marvelous line darts forth joyously, to bring fantastic creatures to life in its toils, vibrating without alteration in the transparent air. A calm gentleness prevails in all these landscapes, a kind of fierce wholesomeness; mystery is no longer made manifest, but dissolved in the air, unleashed in the arabesque, concealed behind a gentle humor" (ibid., p. 131).
In letters dated 21 September 1953, 2 November 1953 and 9 January 1954, James Johnson Sweeney of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York attempted to acquired the present work from René Gaffé for the Museum's permanent collection.
Please note this painting has been requested for the following upcoming exhibitions: Joan Miró: 1918-1945 to be held at the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, July-September 2002 and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, October-December 2002; Joan Miró: Snail Woman Flower Star to be held at the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf, July-October 2002; and Rétrospective Joan Miró to be held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris, 2004.
(fig. 1) Joan Miró, Carnaval d'arlequin, 1924-1925.
Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001
(fig. 2) Joan Miró, Chien aboyant à la lune, 1926.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001
(fig. 3) Joan Miró, Paysage (Le Lièvre), 1927.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
ADAGP, Succession Joan Miró, 2001