Often, in front of "modern" works of art, it happens to hear that it is a fraud, that even a child would be able to make paintings like that. Unfortunately, critics and art historians are not always able to correctly communicate the meaning of certain works. And the world remains divided between those who spend millions of dollars on a painting and those who despise and mock both the painter and the buyer. The purpose of this post is to generate some doubts, starting from Mirò's works.
Let's look at this painting, and try to give a rating from zero to ten about its artistic value:
The title is "Person, bird and stars".
What led Mirò to paint in this way? Let's try, with the help of his own words, to reconstruct a path.
Of course, beyond what the artist says about himself, we will also take into account the environmental conditions in which he lived, often illuminating to understand things.
For example, Mirò was born into a family of cabinetmakers and goldsmiths. Surrounded by drawings, pencils, projects ...
This favored the behavior of drawing, which became frequent and pleasant in the young artist, who found delight in school almost only in the Drawing class: "Attending that class was like a religious ceremony for me, I washed my hands thoroughly before touching the paper and pencils. Working tools turned into sacred objects for me and I worked as if I were performing a ritual. "
After an unhappy experience in the Commercial School of Barcelona, his parents left him free to attend an art school, always in Barcelona, between 1912 and 1915.
Attention to the years. The movement of abstract art was born. Its essential characteristic is a relative freedom from the representation of real objects.
From this (Raffaello):
to this, a painting of Kandinsky:
A few years after painting this picture, Kandinsky went further, towards pure forms and colors:
"Mainstream" art is pleasant to look at and easy to access because it represents, for example, the human figure in a more or less realistic way, in emotionally intense situations. Let's think, for example, of an inhabitant of Venice who in 1500 had the opportunity to look at this painting by Tintoretto:
Warm colors, the skill in representing faces, bodies, details, feelings. This painting has given joy to its visitors for half a millennium.
But there is more. Even the shapes and colors can represent pleasant visual stimuli in themselves.
We like the former more than the latter:
We may also like this:
Finally, even the emotionality that "deforms" the realistic representation, which overflows from the picture, can be a reinforcing experience:
Mirò was born as an artist in a period where abstract art began to spread, and when he moved to Paris he found this environment.
The word to Mirò:
"My tendency to despoil, to simplify has been exercised in three areas: the modeled, the colors and the representation of the characters. Without modeled or chiaroscuro, depth has no limits: movement can extend indefinitely . "
"More than the picture itself, what matters is what it releases, what it spreads ... For me a picture must produce sparks ... It must flare, it must be like those stones that the Pyrenean shepherds use to light their pipes."
A bird becomes its movement:
This painting is meant to represent birds and a woman at night. The birds are almost unrecognizable if we look for their shape. Approximate, essential, they actually exists more as a movement. Mirò has built his own language. Here is a painting entitled "Woman and birds", where we see movement, not form:
Furthermore, Mirò loved folk art and primitive art: he found that apparent simplicity very significant and profound:
"Folk art always moves me, it is an art where there is no trick or deception. It goes straight to the purpose. It is surprising, and so full of possibilities."
The same goes for primitive art: the female human figures of Mirò recall the primitive Venuses, with a touch of sensuality and irony:
Over the years, Mirò's painting has become increasingly essential:
"I want to achieve maximum intensity with minimum means."
The signs become more and more essential and primitive, almost aggressive. But, at the same time, there is the search for a language accessible to all, which ironically offers us a different way of looking at reality. Maybe a child can better appreciate such a picture:
Mirò's art is a path that has led him away from the beaten track, in search of a very personal artistic language, whose purpose remains, however, to give joy to the observer.
"Good painting opens its way and through the eye it is directed to the spirit, but it is the heart that understands it. Painting is a matter of love."
I hope these words of mine have managed to generate doubts. This is not an artistic essay, but a writing on how different things often are from how we think.
Has your rating of the picture we saw at the beginning changed?
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