Tate provides an intriguing slant to its current monographic show, on Miro, attempting to reveal the dark heart of an artist famed for his otherwise ostensibly carefree use of colour and line in everything from scribblings to canvases. As a result, much has been made of this as the first exhibition to expose Miro as a political animal. Yet for a man preoccupied with the symbiosis of his mind and art, one might imagine that his thoughts may well have strayed some distance from the outside influences of contemporary political hardships. If such a hypothetical narrative were true, one could accuse the Tate of glossing Miro’s work with an intentionality he might never have had. Implicit in the exhibition’s approach is the suggestion that a retrospective of this scale can only be supported by the positioning of Miro as politically radical, like his contemporaries. Any politicised defence of his nationality is perhaps subtler than the curators intended, yet what lies beneath these overtones does not disappoint. The variety of the work on display is outstanding, and to view it from beginning to end enforces the understanding that Miro was both a man of his time and an eminent Catalan.
The exhibition begins with Miro’s scenes of his homestead at Mont-roig and is focused on the production of the artist’s ‘Euro-Modernism’ works in 1917. Tate’s definition of this period feels as if it is derived from context rather than subject matter, and ironically some of the devices that could be taken to be more outwardly political are overlooked. There are hints of Cubist collage in The Tilled Field (1923) where a press cutting entitled ‘Jour’ is wedged, without explanation, into the Catalan landscape.
The highlight of the exhibition, the Barcelona Series of 1944, is Miro distilled. These works were repressed by Franco, which may have been due to the artist’s evident imaginative freedom rather than his political intent. Frenzied characters dance between stars and inkblots, decorated with hurried penises and pubic hair; they are hysterical, juvenile, and wonderful. They read like the doodles of someone on the cusp of adolescence, still amused by symbols of adulthood. The given description implies these works are a product of despair, but they say a lot about the nature of defiance, as caricatures rather than voodoo figures. The Star Caresses the Breast of a Negress (1938) is breathtaking in its minimalist eroticism and seductive in its secrecy.
The room that closes the exhibition shows the artist in his eighties, still challenging the status quo, something which the curators imply is manifested in an overtly political sense as well as stylistically. The methods applied to his final works are even more strikingly unreserved than those characterising his earlier technique. Fireworks (1974) appears to comprise unadulterated bursts of black paint, the arbitrary lines of which have been tenuously linked to the artist’s political irritations.
Miro described himself as an ‘artist who wanted to say something useful to mankind’, and as this monographic show attests, he does achieve this, presenting in his work an evident engagement with his own mind, his native country, and an individual aesthetic. I feel that the message here is more insular than the curators are suggesting, but the works on view my be more aptly seen as Miro’s individual response to a home nation and society in flux, rather than being a reflection of wider attitudes towards the contemporary political climate.
Whilst the layout of the rooms was well devised, and the chronology seamless, the overall curatorial agenda hovers dangerously close to breaking one golden rule; the visitor is interested in the artist’s vision, not that of the curatorial team. Miro undoubtedly has something to say, but the Tate might have resisted the temptation to put words into his mouth.
Until Sep 11
NATASHA MORRIS