Miró (Basic Art)

by Janis Mink

With a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miró (1893–1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ceramics, and embracing ideologies as varied as Fauvism, Surrealism, Dada, Magic Realism, Cubism, and abstraction. Over the course of his prodigious output, Miró evolved constantly, seeking to eschew categorization and the approval of “bourgeois” art critics as much as he pursued his own dreamlike worlds. Emerging into the public spotlight in the early 1920s, he first experimented with Fauvism and Cubism before developing a distinctive style of symbols and pictograms, arranged in elusive visual narratives, with frequent reference to Catalan life. As his career progressed, Miró moved towards Surrealism, and, despite never fully identifying with the movement, emerged as one of its most celebrated practitioners with techniques including automated drawing, Lyrical Abstraction, and Color Field painting. In later years, he diversified his media further, working with ceramics, textiles, and even proposing sculptures made of gas. Through his vivid colors, dreamlike fantasies, and enigmatic symbols, this book brings together the numerous strands of Miró’s kaleidoscopic oeuvre to introduce his fascinating career, its interaction with major modernist movements, and how it made him into a modernist legend. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Lauren]

▫️JOAN MIRÓ: A Poet Among the Surrealists, 1893-1983 by Janis Mink, @taschen Basic Art Series

#ReadtheWorld21📍Spain / Catalonia

"How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for paintings? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in the Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed and sometimes hadnt had supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling."

I've sung the praises of the Taschen Basic Art Series before, and I'm back with it to share one of my faves: Catalonian surrealist Joan Miró. The book includes a surprisingly detailed biography and a catalog of many of his paintings. Influenced by the schools and forms around him, but with a special touch.

One of my favorite things about Miró are his bold color choices. I came across his work when I was a teenager and particularly loved the look of his piece "The Gold of the Azure" from 1967. In fact, I had a college notebook with the art on the cover because I loved it so much! Unfortunately the folder is long gone, but a good Miró memory!

Great tidbit I picked up from this reading: one of Miró's most well known pieces "The Farm" from 1921. Several galleries rejected it, but it caught the eye of a young Ernest Hemingway who was living in Europe at the time. He saved up, bought it, and brought it home, and it was later donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC by his wife, where I've seen it, but was unaware of its provençe!

[Diletta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devo dire che conoscevo poco di Miró, non mi entusiasmava molto perché lo vedevo un po' di transizione, un po' scarno. Questo libro mi è stato regalato, e ne sono veramente grata. Rimangio tutto quello che ho mai detto su Miró, opere stupende, e non conoscendole mi sono anche resa conto di quanto queste edizioni siano ricche dal punto di vista anche dell'informazione, non solo per la scelta e la cura delle immagini.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t taken any art history classes, and it didn’t matter! We’re shown the evolution of Miró’s art from The Corn Doctor (1901) through Personages, Birds, Star (1978). I could usually see what the author was talking about, and I felt ok if I wasn’t completely sure because it was all interesting.

An artist friend, pointing to part of a mural Miró had nearly finished: “That is a fish, isn’t it?”
Miró, somewhat irritably: “For me, it’s a woman.”

Bonus: I didn’t learn any terrible things about Miró the person, so I can keep enjoying his art guilt-free.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4 stars

[Gemma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,25

Joan Miró nació en Barcelona en 1893. Fue un artista que dedicó su vida a la pintura y, más tarde, a la cerámica, a la escultura y al grabado. Su arte pasó por muchas etapas hasta encontrar su propio estilo, el arte abstracto, pasando por el fauvismo, el expresionismo, el realismo, el cubismo y el surrealismo; nunca conforme y siempre buscando la forma que le permitiera expresarse mejor. Además, intentaba continuamente “trascender la pintura, superar la experiencia meramente visual para conducir su arte en una dirección conceptual”, motivo por el cual también experimentó con medios y materiales diversos.

Una vez más, me ha encantado acercarme a la vida y obra de un artista de la mano de la Editorial Taschen y, en este caso, de Joan Miró. No solo se hace un repaso biográfico de su vida acompañándolo de su contexto histórico, sino que también muestra muchas de sus obras y, en algunos casos, las analiza, aspecto que me resulta sumamente interesante. Además, me ha sorprendido mucho el camino recorrido por Miró, como fue buscando a lo largo de los años el medio que le permitiera plasmar todo aquello que rondaba por su cabeza y su perseverancia hasta hacerse un hueco en el panorama artístico internacional, aún y todas las dificultades por las que pasó.

Si tuviera que ponerle una pega, es que en algunos casos se hace referencia a obras suyas que no se incluyen en el libro.

✨"Trabajo duramente; me muevo en un arte de conceptos que toma la realidad solo como punto de partida, no como meta final."✨

[SamWho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anche se l’arte contemporanea non è la mia preferita, devo ammettere che questa lettura mi ha fatto rivalutare l’opera di Mirò. Decisamente consigliato.