A trip to Museum

On a recent visit to the meadow museum on the southern Methodist university campus. While viewing the many paintings, the first one that caught my eye was “The Circus”. Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist. In Spanish, the word “miró” means “he saw.” What an appropriate name for an artist! Joan Miró was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona, Spain, but he spent much of his youth on the family farm at Montroig. Beginning in 1921, he lived in Paris, but he frequently returned to visit Spain. Historians tell us that when he went to Paris, he took a handful of dried grass from the farm at Montroig as a reminder of one of his favorite places. While living in Paris he was a friend of Pablo Picasso and was influenced by the major art movements of the time, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, but his unique style of painting makes categorization of his work difficult. Miró painted this work to raise his spirits at a time when he was depressed about the Spanish Civil War. The cheerful shapes and colors of The Circus communicate the joy and excitement of being at a circus. The texture of the board on which Miró made the painting can also remind us of that experience. This painting is in Miró’s unique and imaginative style, though his work is sometimes associated with Dada or Surrealism. The Circus is painted on a board that is not a traditional material used in art works. Sometimes artists use unusual materials to produce their works, and Miró has used a common building material for this piece. The material is called Celotex and was often used as an insulation material in buildings. Celotex was made of compressed sugar cane fibers sometimes with a binder of sizing or varnish. Energy bursts in the wiry line that is so characteristic of Miro. This line faulty energizes the principal image of seal and ball, the soft-edged color splotches float like changing spotlights to complete the snow-like evocation.