I was visiting Barcelona, Spain, between April 26 and May 5 --- my first return visit since I lived there in the mid-1990s. The occasion was for my wife, Patty, and I to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. I could write many blog posts about this trip, from the waves of nostalgia that swept over me, the return to familiar haunts, the new things I saw and did with Patty as we created our own memories together (it was her first time in Barcelona).
For now, I'm considering the work I saw in the Joan Miro museum, and in particular his prints. I've never been much of a fan of Miro's work --- the whimsy often obscures the inventiveness for me --- but I remember being struck by the lithographs when I used to come to the museum a quarter of a century ago (free entry with my student ID). Seeing them again, I was still as taken with them as I was back then.
The selection in the museum consists of about 40 framed prints, arrange in two groups of 20, installed on the walls shoulder to shoulder. In common with almost everything by Miro, the shapes are variations on swirling lines, squiggles, child-like star shapes, organisms that elongate into cartoonish cellular shapes with noses and eyes, some of them filled in with cross hatching and sold tone. When I look at them from a distance, the impression is of uniformity and similarity. But getting in close, I started to see the little variations of placement and scale of these elements. I assume the drawing on the litho stone was spontaneous, and the prints were created close together in time, but one sees that a part of him was aware of the need, or the impulse, to change the direction of his hand for each print.
The result is that the eye is constantly moving around the picture and constantly being surprised by the changes in contrast and mood. Perhaps the monochrome helps: the primary colours of the paintings might be what increases the whimsicality, but in the prints one feels more the joy of invention and creative play.