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Jackson Pollock and Joan Miro Psychoanalysis; What Links these two Artists?
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Two greats of the art world who influenced an entire generation of artists to an extent that is hard to overestimate: What links these two exceptional artists?
By Katharina Cichosch
Two giants whose influence on the development of painting and indeed on their audience cannot be measured in figures: On one side the New Yorker Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and on the other Catalan-born and Mallorcan-by-choice Joan Miró (1893-1983)... while they differed from each other in various ways and were both very autonomous in their work, the shattering of conventions was something they both shared. “Raw”, “original” and “powerful” are adjectives frequently applied to both Miró’s and Pollock’s works; the notion of a regression to the child-like and thus also to a great extent “unconscious” ways of painting also recurs time and again.
When Sigmund Freud, the now world-famous neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, presented his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” on November 4, 1899, he most likely guessed how radically new the theses contained in it were, but he probably did not expect that not only modern psychology and psychiatry, but indeed a fundamental part of Western intellectual and art history would change as a result from that point onwards. The discovery of the unconscious (nowadays often mistakenly referred to as the “subconscious”) meant shock and humiliation for some, but a form of release for others.
Jackson Pollock...consulted a doctor about psychoanalytical sessions between 1939 and 1940; his drawings and paintings became the means through which Pollock aimed to express his inner state to Dr. Henderson (which, incidentally, the doctor would publish after the artist’s death to much criticism and indignation).
Where Miró was concerned, the reception his works received was particularly influenced by psychoanalytical concepts and methods: When his grandson Joan Punyet Miró explains the images his grandfather created, words like “libido” and “death drive” crop up.
Whether or not Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró actually gained artistic access to their unconscious, no one of course will ever seriously be able to determine.
“What happens, happens within”, says Miró...quoting the end of a Catalan saying, only to then quickly backtrack: “Within?” he chuckles with an affected hand gesture, “Uhh!”. Whereby he charmingly rebuffs those who always like to characterize him as an artist whose rich inner life is almost constanty revealed and accessible at all times.
Miró’s paintings like “Oiseau de feu / Firebird” or “Oiseau lune jaune / Yellow moonbird” from the early 1960s are strongly reminiscent of Pollock’s drip paintings, whilst Miró’s earlier works, on the other hand, with their colour surfaces running freely into one another (an absolute novelty at the time), provided important impulses for Jackson Pollock on the way towards complete abstraction and to entirely purpose-free painting. Before the discovery of the Surrealists, Pollock’s subjects were exclusively of an objective nature, as were those of Joan Miró, amongst others, at the time.
Another aspect the two artists have in common, however, is that they did not limit themselves to few role models and sources of ideas, but rather used virtually everything as a source of inspiration – from Japanese Indian-ink drawings and antique cave paintings on Miró’s side to the sessions of psychoanalysis that Jackson Pollock underwent. This was in contrast to the almost ermetic existence that both artists pursued for certain periods, almost as a counterpoint to the constant search for ideas, a necessary moment of collection and concentration.
More... https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/con...