Praeterita

 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 s...

There was a good article in yesterday's Guardian Newspaper (UK) about a forthcoming show of Joan Miro's work at the Tate in London. I remember when I was living in Barcelona, studying for my Fine Art MA, that an extremely pleasant way to spend an afternoon was to do the following: walk through the Barrio Xino and then across to the hill of Montjuic; climb the staircases up to the top of the hill, then walk through the park to the Fundacio Joan Miro; look around the galleries for a while, and then sit in the outdoor cafe, which was in a small courtyard with a fountain in it in a quadrangle formed by the museum buildings. You could sit there for hours, with the sun warming your face, chatting to friends, before maybe walking over and taking the cable car down and across to the other side of the port. The clip above is from a French film about the great man (thanks to Figaro Magazine). If, like me, you understand some French and Catalan, you'll get what he's saying ...