Poetry in Paint: Joan Miró’s Retrospective in Hong Kong

On the opening day of the HKMoA’s large-scale retrospective of the Spanish painter, we talk to the director of Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró, Dr Marko Daniel.

Surrealist art is often associated with depicting the unconscious mind and finding beauty in the ordinary or unexpected. For the Spanish painter Joan Miró, described by the French writer and poet André Robert Breton as “a surrealist before surrealism”, poetry lay in everyday objects.

Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century alongside his Spanish contemporaries Picasso and Dalí, Miró’s ennobling of humble objects is currently celebrated in a major retrospective at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA). Titled The Poetry of Everyday Life, it comprises paintings, sculptures, drawings, textiles, lithographs, posters and audio-visual materials from the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, 80 percent of which have never been seen in Asia. The HKMoA has also enlisted local artists Gaybird and LeeLee Chan to pay tribute to Miró’s work from a local perspective, and is highlighting the dialogue between east and west with works by Chinese artists Zao Wou-ki, Wu Guanzhong, Luis Chan and Ha Bik-chuen.

As the exhibition opened, we spoke about the artist and his importance with Dr Marko Daniel, who heads the foundation in Miró’s native Barcelona.

What is Miró’s relationship with poetry?

For Miró there’s no difference between painting and poetry. Poetry for Miró was
a way of talking about language and meaning at its most concentrated. When you write
a poem you aren’t looking for ways to make the poem longer; it’s precise and dense and super-concentrated.

Tell us about the exhibition highlights.

One of the most striking paintings is Fireworks, which is made up of three large-scale canvases. He made this painting for his major retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris – he was 80 years old but still full of energy. He created the work by putting three canvases slightly inclined against the wall and then throwing buckets of paint against the canvas to create this splash. He didn’t practice before: he was so experienced he knew how to control it. You can go to his studio and see where he put these canvases, because the paint is still on the floor, proving he did it once and it was perfect.

Burnt Canvas is also quite extraordinary, it’s a series of five canvases, which he then attacked with a knife and scissors: he cut, he slashed, he burnt, he poured petrol on to them and set it on fire. The painting isn’t a barrier to the world; instead, you can see the world through the canvas. At the same time, you become very aware of your own place in the world, so it’s about being located and being placed.

Woman and Bird is created from totally humble objects: an ensaymada (Spanish pastry) box, a policeman’s hat, a pebble, a wooden bench and a weight. He ennobles them by casting them in bronze and painting them in pop colours to create a woman’s face and a bird sitting on her head. It’s also a provocative statement: I think mischievously if you have a pebble on the hat of a policeman it’s as if someone has thrown it, but you’re left to your own devices to interpret it.

What’s the relevance of surrealism today?

It keeps coming back in unexpected ways. Two years ago, the Miró foundation took part in Barcelona Gay Pride for the first time. We worked with a young LGBTQ artist in Barcelona who was interested in depictions of human figures in Miró’s work. They’re figures that represent an interesting approach to gender fluidity because they’re neither male nor female. It’s a perspective that’s retrospectively applied to works 80-90 years earlier, that are still meaningful and relevant to our way of looking at the world today.

How does his work reflect Catalonia?

Miró is one of the artists who best expresses what it means to be from Catalonia, because of that sense of rootedness, that sense of place and identity that he represents. At the same time he manages to be a bridge from the local to the universal. This allows him to be both a focus for reflecting on who you are – if you’re from Catalonia – but also how you connect with culture if you come from somewhere else.

He lived through a tumultuous period in European history. How was he affected by it?

It was impossible for Miró not to be affected by it. During the Spanish Civil War he was in self-imposed exile in France. He was poor, he was hungry and he didn’t know what the future would hold for him. It was a terrible time. When the Spanish civil war ended, the Franco regime had won and at the same time World War 2 broke out. He didn’t know what to do next – all the artists were fleeing to America. But he needed to be where he belonged, so he went to Majorca and it was there that he painted his most famous series of paintings, The Constellations, about the pain and suffering of war.

Miró moved to Paris in 1920. How important was his time there?

It was formative, influential and essential for Miró to become who he was. His art developed by leaps and bounds when he went to Paris. He met poets, artists, musicians, composers, theatre directors and opera empresarios; it was just crazily wonderful.

The foundation was created by Miró when he was alive, rather than posthumously, how significant is this?

Initially called the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art, the foundation is one of four gifts of his to the city; others include the Ramblas mosaic and an airport mural. He created the foundation at a time when he’d reconciled himself with Barcelona – he’d spent 50 years not exhibiting in Barcelona because of the political situation. The foundation was a place to house his own collection and also promote the work of young and emerging artists.

What lessons do we learn from Miró?

At an early age he wrote a letter to his father saying that he’d embarked on a career
as an accountant only because he was obliged to do it – and did so without listening to his heart – and it made him ill. He tells his father that he was born to be an artist and he renounces his previous life up to that point. That’s the life lesson from Miró: if you know exactly what you want to do, do it, go and be it. He was also keen to experiment and to never stop experimenting with his art. It’s an extraordinary life lesson for all of us to keep thinking, to keep being open, to look for new things, to do new things and not stop being engaged with your world. Being engaged with the world happened most powerfully for him through his engagement with humble and ordinary objects.

The Poetry of Everyday Life is at HKMoA until June 28.