Miro

"Since the age of the cave-dwellers, art has done nothing but degenerate." So said Joan Miró, one of the most unique painter-sculptors of the twentieth century. Miró’s statement, aside from revealing his views on the history of art, also says something about his own artistic aims. He wanted to bring art back to its primitive, playful origins, to paint as if he were painting on the wall of a cave. Eschewing every technique of …

…inscribing them with stark intentionality. At the same time that these forms seem to arise out of naive invention, there is something ominous or even foreboding about them. As one critic put it, Miró’s "dreams are nightmares and man inspires him with disgust." Yet somehow Miró takes this ominous vision and, through an act of optimistic will, turns it into an expression of childlike exuberance -- without letting us forget where that exuberance originated.