A Drawing by Joan Miró

Last Sunday again I passed by the Galerie Lareuse in Georgetown. I found it closed and I tried to take some shots through the window. There was a drawing by Joan Miró, among other artworks.

I like the delicacy of his drawings: his sense of fantasy is complete in all respects; only I think his drawings are of elfin grace while his sculptures are anything but delicate. Look at this painting of Miró, from the Washington National Gallery of Art, and look at this Personnage Gothique - Oiseau Eclair from the Sculpture Garden of the same museum.


However, look again at this sculpture and at the drawing from the window of Galerie Lareuse. The drawing looks delicate, the sculpture is challenging our sense of beauty, but the approach is the same. Miró was in search for the four-dimensional space, which means he was looking for the fourth dimension: the transcendental. Malevich or Mondrian were looking for the same fourth dimension, yet they were trying to arrive there through other paths. Miró took the surrealist approach (or did he invent it?), trying to free himself from the tyranny of the objectual space through spontaneity: the automatic drawing. I interpret in the same way his desire to assassinate the painting: kill the conventions, transcend the space. The result is this bunch of dream-shapes.

It remains for me an unanswered question, why his sculptural drawings look delicate while his sculptures do not? Because of the crayon?

Here are two more works by Miró: Harlequin's Carnival (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo) and Sourire de ma blonde (Private Collection).








(Galerie Lareuse)

(Joan Miró)

(Avangarda 20)