vince’s ear

This Train Does Not Stop

Good words to live by, it seemed Joan Miro thought as he picked up the broken sign he found near a train station. He put it up in his studio kind of as a “program,” something to keep him motivated. I suppose this metaphor imitated the Catalan artist’s desire to constantly move forward, to grow in life and art, and stop for no one or thing, as time indeed stops for no one.

His career is proof that he lived up to his rusty train sign’s advice. Throughout his career he kept growing and embracing change. He leapt from idea to idea, some influenced by other contemporary artists of early 20th century Paris, most his own. He loathed conventional art methods and strived to constantly innovate and learn new forms of expression. His techniques ranged from painting and sculpture to a blending of the two, to collage, and to wild new ideas such as fog and gas sculptures.

Miro’s art has been classified as Surrealist, especially seeing that he sometimes unofficially called himself one. He met with some Surrealists and Dadaists when he moved to Paris in 1919, where he also met Picasso, also from Catalonia. Yet no matter what group he belonged to (at some stretches none at all), his art was always his own unique creations.

The Harlequin’s Carnival (seen above) marks a change from the figurative to the abstract. In it we see many colorful characters dancing and floating around with a “jack in the box” harlequin in the center playing guitar. Miro was a fan of automatism, or automatic writing and/or drawing, which might explain the haphazard array of fantastical subjects all around.

The funny thing about this painting and others like it is the artist claims to sometimes see these happy little characters in reality. For instance, he explains the Harlequin’s Carnival by saying he came home one day very hungry and laid down. As he looked at the ceiling, these creatures appeared before his very eyes in a hallucinatory display.

Other paintings include his Constellation series, where patterns and images, often connected by lines are shown against a solid background, like the stars.

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