"Suite dans les idees" - is it important in art?

I have always been fascinated by a consistency of thought in people as they develop an idea or a work. It seems often to be important to have a logical progression, an evolution of ideas that allow others to follow what is being done. Nonetheless, it seems often to be a challenge for artists to produce a consistent body of work, and I wonder more and more if it is that important.

In the art market, for instance, it is often considered desirable that an artist work in a coherent and understandably sequential fashion - think of Andy Warhol's series of silkscreen prints that have been so wildly successful from their creation. Art galleries are often reported to be less than enthusiastic if an artist suddenly changes and goes off in a very different direction in the work.

Personally, I realise that there are two warring tendencies in my art-making. I find it often to be rewarding to work in series, trying to explore aspects of a subject in a sequence of pieces. Yet I also love to go off in a totally different direction, trying another medium, another approach that has nothing to do with anything else I have done. So I was interested to find a quote about Joan Miro, who told an interviwer in 1928, that "when I've finished something... I've got to take off from there in the opposite direction" (from "A Conversation with Joan Miro", Francesc Tribal, La Publicite, 14 July 1928).

This observation is an insight into how an artist works - where the inspiration comes from, the wellspring of ideas and general artistic discipline. I think that many artists relate to Miro's way of working - variety is stimulating. They may later circle back to a previous theme, but with the subtle changes that time can impose.

This "suite dans les idees" - a coherency and consistency of ideas - can lead to the definition of an artist's style and hallmark. But it can also lead to repetition and even staleness... Perhaps Miro was wise to find reasons to renew his energies by challenge and change. The diversity of his oeuvre certainly makes a good case for going off in "the opposite direction".

Artists' Dedication

The other day, a friend remarked to me that in these lean economic times, we will see important works of art and literature being produced. In other words, artists, almost in spite of themselves, will be working away, and the challenges they face will be a stimulus to go further, do things differently and make progress.

This dedication to art-making was, for instance, an early characteristic of Joan Miro. As early in his career as 1915, he quoted Goethe's statement that, "He who always looks ahead may sometimes falter, but he then returns with new strength to his task". At that time, Miro was principally dedicated to landscape painting, and was soon to produce some of his early masterpieces about life at Mont-roig, his family home in the Tarragona countryside, near Barcelona.

"The Farm" (at left, image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC),"House with Palm Trees", "The Rut" or "Vegetable Garden and Donkey" are all results of what Miro regarded as trial and error work. He admitted to stumbling as he tried to deal with his depiction of the countryside, but he always got "to his feet again". This determination to "return with new strength to his task" remained with him during his long and artistically very inventive life, despite the difficulties he experienced personally or because of his opposition to Franco and his regime in Spain. (A marvellous celebration of Miro's dedication to art, "The Ladder of Escape", can be seen in Barcelona at the Fundacio Joan Miro from 13th October, 2011 to 25th March next year. It has just closed at the Tate Modern, London.)

Every single artist hesitates, stumbles, doubts and abandons one path for another. Only those who have enough inner fortitude, a strong enough conviction that they must continue with their endeavours, are people whose creativity leaves a mark in our world. When there are really difficult times, economically, politically or personally, it becomes a real test of an artist's dedication that he or she continues to work and produce. We are living in such times. It will be interesting to see - in a few years' time - whether my friend's prediction about stellar work being produced in today's world is accurate.

Same Exhibit, Different Venues - how to see Miro

Sometimes one is lucky enough to catch the same exhibition at different venues, and it is then extremely interesting to see how the different presentation affects the exhibit's feel.

This happened to me when I had first see Joan Miro. The Ladder of Escape at the Tate Modern in London last year, and found that the same exhibition is now showing at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona until 18th March.

Of course, in my personal opinion, the actual buildings cannot be compared, with the Joan Miro Foundation, white, elegant and sprawling along the hill crest over downtown Barcelona as an eloquent evocation of the Mediterranean world, being the far more compatible venue. Nonetheless, it is when you enter the exhibition that its presentation becomes interesting to observe.

In the Tate version, the early Miro paintings of the Mont-roig world, near Barcelona, in which he grew up and which marked him so deeply, were spread out far apart, even in different rooms. In Barcelona, the Mont-roig world was powerfully evoked by grouping all these wonderful early, seminal paintings together in the same, rather intimate area. One of the most evocative, and important as the first of Miro's Surrealistic paintings, is The Tilled Field (image courtesy of the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum), painted in 1923-24.


As an aside, this painting also fascinated me because it contains a wonderful herald to Santiago Calatrava's sculpture-communications tower that takes flight into the air nearby in the Montjuic heights of Barcelona, near the 1992 Olympic stadium. Depending on the angle at which you view the Communications Tower, it has very much the same feel as the left-hand symbol in Miro's painting above.

The Miro Foundation grouped together all the Catalan Peasants paintings, with their wonderful shorthand that Miro used to express his feelings about Catalonia, the peasants with guitars, his tussle between voids in the painting and the need to fill these voids or leave them free... The effect was far more powerful and interesting to see these works together, with their progressions and differences, as compared to their spacious presentation by the Tate Modern.

The same intimate, interesting effect was achieved in Barcelona by a much closer juxtaposition of the wonderful Constellations series. Beyond, the presentation was more reminescent of that done by the Tate, mainly because the later Miro canvases became much bigger, bolder and fewer in series - that meant that they could be hung in rooms, series by series. Nonetheless, there were interesting pauses and changes in pace as at the Miro Foundation, there are Miro sculptures, maany small and whimisical, in addition to his single marble sculpture, the Solar Bird and some of the wonderful ceramic ones out on the wide terrace with the Barcelona cityscape as the sunlit backdrop.

This fascinating exhibition travels next to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It would be so interesting to catch it there too and see what differences can be achieved and nuances explored at yet another, different venue.