Joan Miro

Echoing Joan Miró's Wisdom by Jeannine Cook

Joan Miró

Joan Miró

The Fundacion Pilar I Joan Miró a Mallorca is a wonderful place in which to spend a hot summer morning.  From the sunswept terraces that overlook the brilliance of the Mediterranean to the cool, diffuse light of alabaster screens in the exhibition spaces, all the senses are awakened by unexpected juxtapositions of interest and beauty. Rafael Moneo designed the exhibition spaces as a complement to Miró’s studio and Pilar and Joan Miró’s home.  Gardens and reflecting pools are glimpsed from the building through often low windows, enhancing the building’s spaciousness and its spare simplicity.

In a way, the buildings follow a concept that Miró enunciated about his paintings in black and white.  Writing in 1959, Miró said, “My wish is to achieve maximum intensity with minimum means”. Many of his paintings verge on the oriental in many ways during this period.

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

His desire to use an intense but spare vocabulary in monochromatic work resonated with me, for increasingly, that is what interests me in my metalpoint drawings.  How to say a lot in a condensed or powerful fashion, using the minimum of means.  In truth,metalpoint is such a simple, humble drawing medium: just a piece of metal, making marks on a smooth surface prepared with a ground.  Its range of tones is limited, its scale often limited because of the slowness of execution, its discipline of technique demanding. Yet despite all that, like Miró’s black and white paintings, metalpoint at its best is quietly powerful.  Its lustre is alluring and unusual, its economy of form arresting.

One of the masters of silverpoint/metalpoint was of course Leonardo da Vinci. He led the way in the maximum impact-minimum means league.

A Rider on Rearing Horse Trampling a Fallen Foe (Study for Sforza Monument), Leonardo da Vinci, metalpoint on blue prepared paper, (image courtesy of Windsor Castle, Royal Library)

A Rider on Rearing Horse Trampling a Fallen Foe (Study for Sforza Monument), Leonardo da Vinci, metalpoint on blue prepared paper, (image courtesy of Windsor Castle, Royal Library)

Another silverpoint artist working today with a very different approach is Roy Eastland, a British artist.  Nonetheless, to my eye, he is highly successful in the impact he achieves with the humble medium of silverpoint.

What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that, Roy Eastland, 2010, silverpoint on gesso

What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that, Roy Eastland, 2010, silverpoint on gesso

One of my minimalist recent metalpoint drawings owes its origins to the patterns I saw recently on a huge plane tree one hot July day in France.

Traces IV-V-VI, silver-goldpoint, 2013, artist Jeannine Cook
Traces IV-V-VI, silver-goldpoint, 2013, artist Jeannine Cook

"Cannibalising" the World by Jeannine Cook

Joan Miro famously once remarked that "That magical spark is the only thing that matters in art".  In other words, he noticed and absorbed everything imaginable around him in his life, cannibalised it and transformed it into art, especially in his sculptures.  The most amazing things became part of his art, from his children's toys to the famous paper bag which caused one of his foundries to exclaim, "You expect us to cast a paper bag?"  The answer was yes, in bronze!

Miro - sculpture, image courtesy of Jeff Epler

Miro - sculpture, image courtesy of Jeff Epler

To me, the lesson Miro gives us all is that as artists, we have to be open to every possible resource, every possible influence, because from it, and usually from the most unlikely of instances, comes the spark that leads to creation of something new in our art.

We all know about those moments when we pass something which is part of our daily life and which, until magic suddenly happens, has been unremarkable.  Then, unexpectedly, the light falls on the object in a certain way, or there is a new relevance to it because of something else going on in our head, whatever.  Then the "cannibalising" happens, and we can incorporate a new dimension into what we are creating.

Other times, the world becomes fresh and exciting because of a visit to somewhere new, which talks to one.  That little voice inside one's head says, "Pay attention, this is important", even though, at the time, you don't really know why.

This happened to me in Matera, South Italy, when I was looking at Neolithic shards of pottery in the Archaeological Museum.  They fascinated me, and I draw a lot of them, something I normally don't think of doing.  But as I drew them, I began to realise I was linking back to early artists who had, in their turn, looked around them in their world and cannibalised images from what they saw.  This was a link of many thousands of years, a fact which made an even greater impression on me.

Once home again, I realised that these notations that I had made were potentially the basis of a series of silverpoint drawings.  I was cannibalising on the world I had encountered in Matera, in essence.  This is one of the drawings.

Basilicata # 3 - silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Basilicata # 3 - silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Thanks to those artists working aeons ago, I started doing work that is totally different from my normal drawings.  Sometimes it is definitely fun to be a "cannibal of the world".

Same Exhibit, Different Venues - how to see Miro by Jeannine Cook

Sometimes one is lucky enough to catch the same exhibition at different venues, and it is then extremely interesting to see how the different presentation affects the exhibits feel.

This happened to me when I had first see Joan Miro. The Ladder of Escape at the Tate Modern in London last year, and found that the same exhibition is now showing at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona until 18th March.

Of course, in my personal opinion, the actual buildings cannot be compared, with the Joan Miró Foundation, white, elegant and sprawling along the hill crest over down town Barcelona as an eloquent evocation of the Mediterranean world, being the far more compatible venue. Nonetheless, it is when you enter the exhibition that its presentation becomes interesting to observe.

The Tilled Field,  Joan Miró, 1923-24, Image courtesy of the  Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum

The Tilled Field, Joan Miró, 1923-24, Image courtesy of the  Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum

In the Tate version, the early Miró paintings of the Mont-roig world, near Barcelona, in which he grew up and which marked him so deeply, were spread out far apart, even in different rooms. In Barcelona, the Mont-roig world was powerfully evoked by grouping all these wonderful early, seminal paintings together in the same, rather intimate area. One of the most evocative, and important as the first of Miró's Surrealistic paintings, is The Tilled Field, painted in 1923-24.

Santiago Calatrava's Communications Tower, Barcelona

Santiago Calatrava's Communications Tower, Barcelona

As an aside, this painting also fascinated me because it contains a wonderful herald to Santiago Calatrava's sculpture-communications tower that takes flight into the air nearby in the Montjuic heights of Barcelona, near the 1992 Olympic stadium. Depending on the angle at which you view the Communications Tower, it has very much the same feel as the left-hand symbol in Miró's painting above.

The Miró Foundation grouped together all the Catalan Peasants paintings, with their wonderful shorthand that Miró used to express his feelings about Catalonia, the peasants with guitars, his tussle between voids in the painting and the need to fill these voids or leave them free. The effect was far more powerful and interesting to see these works together, with their progressions and differences, as compared to their spacious presentation by the Tate Modern.

The same intimate, interesting effect was achieved in Barcelona by a much closer juxtaposition of the wonderful Constellations series. Beyond, the presentation was more reminiscent of that done by the Tate, mainly because the later Miró canvases became much bigger, bolder and fewer in series - that meant that they could be hung in rooms, series by series. Nonetheless, there were interesting pauses and changes in pace as at the Miró Foundation, there are Miró sculptures, many small and whimsical, in addition to his single marble sculpture, the Solar Bird and some of the wonderful ceramic ones out on the wide terrace with the Barcelona cityscape as the sunlit backdrop.

This fascinating exhibition travels next to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It would be so interesting to catch it there too and see what differences can be achieved and nuances explored at yet another, different venue.

"Suite dans les idees" - is it important in art? by Jeannine Cook

I have always been fascinated by a consistency of thought in people as they develop an idea or a work. It seems often to be important to have a logical progression, an evolution of ideas that allow others to follow what is being done. Nonetheless, it seems often to be a challenge for artists to produce a consistent body of work, and I wonder more and more if it is that important.

In the art market, for instance, it is often considered desirable that an artist work in a coherent and understandably sequential fashion - think of Andy Warhol's series of silkscreen prints that have been so wildly successful from their creation. Art galleries are often reported to be less than enthusiastic if an artist suddenly changes and goes off in a very different direction in the work.

Personally, I realise that there are two warring tendencies in my art-making. I find it often to be rewarding to work in series, trying to explore aspects of a subject in a sequence of pieces. Yet I also love to go off in a totally different direction, trying another medium, another approach that has nothing to do with anything else I have done. So I was interested to find a quote about Joan Miro, who told an interviwer in 1928, that "when I've finished something, I've got to take off from there in the opposite direction" (from "A Conversation with Joan Miro", Francesc Tribal, La Publicite, 14 July 1928).

This observation is an insight into how an artist works - where the inspiration comes from, the wellspring of ideas and general artistic discipline. I think that many artists relate to Miro's way of working - variety is stimulating. They may later circle back to a previous theme, but with the subtle changes that time can impose.

This "suite dans les idees" - a coherency and consistency of ideas - can lead to the definition of an artist's style and hallmark. But it can also lead to repetition and even staleness. Perhaps Miro was wise to find reasons to renew his energies by challenge and change. The diversity of his oeuvre certainly makes a good case for going off in "the opposite direction".

Artists' Dedication by Jeannine Cook

The other day, a friend remarked to me that in these lean economic times, we will see important works of art and literature being produced. In other words, artists, almost in spite of themselves, will be working away, and the challenges they face will be a stimulus to go further, do things differently and make progress.

This dedication to art-making was, for instance, an early characteristic of Joan Miro . As early in his career as 1915, he quoted Goethe's statement that, "He who always looks ahead may sometimes falter, but he then returns with new strength to his task". At that time, Miro was principally dedicated to landscape painting, and was soon to produce some of his early masterpieces about life at Mont-roig, his family home in the Tarragona countryside, near Barcelona.

House with Palm Tree, 1918, Joan Miró. (image courtesy of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid)

House with Palm Tree, 1918, Joan Miró. (image courtesy of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid)

L’ornière, The Rut, 1918, Joan Miró, Private Collection

L’ornière, The Rut, 1918, Joan Miró, Private Collection

Vegetable Garden and Donkey, 1918, Joan Miró, (Image courtesy of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Vegetable Garden and Donkey, 1918, Joan Miró, (Image courtesy of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

The Farm,  oil on canvas, 1921, Joan Miró (image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC),

The Farm,  oil on canvas, 1921, Joan Miró (image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC),

These four paintings are all results of what Miró regarded as trial and error work. He admitted to stumbling as he tried to deal with his depiction of the countryside, but he always got "to his feet again". This determination to "return with new strength to his task" remained with him during his long and artistically very inventive life, despite the difficulties he experienced personally or because of his opposition to Franco and his regime in Spain. (A marvellous celebration of Miró's dedication to art, "The Ladder of Escape", can be seen in Barcelona at the Fundacio Joan Miro from 13th October, 2011 to 25th March next year. It has just closed at the Tate Modern, London.)

Every single artist hesitates, stumbles, doubts and abandons one path for another. Only those who have enough inner fortitude, a strong enough conviction that they must continue with their endeavours, are people whose creativity leaves a mark in our world. When there are really difficult times, economically, politically or personally, it becomes a real test of an artist's dedication that he or she continues to work and produce. We are living in such times. It will be interesting to see - in a few years' time - whether my friend's prediction about stellar work being produced in today's world is accurate.