Joan Miro's "Chicago" - Another Look..

We have all heard "Art for art's sake"..
And it makes sense!
Art should be independent of all claptrap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like..
- James McNeill Whistler

But enjoying art is always much more pleasurable when we dig deeper..
Knowing about the artists body of work, their style, compare and contrast with other styles, how it fits a particular period of time..

When I saw Joan Miro's sculpture Chicago, click here.. I didn't really care much.. Till I saw his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago and found them very amusing, very absorbing.. which made me dig further into his style and influences..
Now there's a new found appreciation..









Joan Miro [1893-1983] was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramist. If we need some kind of "ism" to define his body of work, it's mostly Surrealism and sometimes Cubism and Expressionism.. combined with the playfulness and whimsical nature of a child..

Simplification is not always desirable. however, that's exactly what I'm doing here.. Wide ranging influences on his works can be broken down to..
- bright colors of the Fauves
- multiple point-of-view of Cubism
- flat two-dimensional quality of Catalan folk art
- dreamlike quality of Surrealism..
As is said.."the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".. These various influences have been internalized, so to produce something very original and very evocative!

Joan Miro used automated drawing, used by other surrealists painters like Salvador Dali and Andre Breton. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper and to a large extent is free of rational control. Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed.

“Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.”
- Joan Miro

RELATED LINKS:
For Joan Miro's sculpture "Chicago"..
# The Art Institute of Chicago...