Miró: Selected Paintings (review)

74 Books decade. He acted as one of the main architects of Richard Grainger,who was the builder for most of the redevelopment of Newcastle in the period after 1820. Dobson was also an accomplished landscape designer, water-colour artist, furniture designer and house and interior designer. He showed his expertise in the design of intriguing structural roofing spans such as that used at the Newcastle Central Station. Lyall Wilkes has captured all facets of Dobson’s life, and the only jarring note which comes out of the book is the fact that much of the architect’s work has been demolished in the name of progress. More reason, perhaps, for the validity of this fine work recording for posterity Dobson’s contribution to our architectural heritage. Mir6: Selected Paintings. Exh. Cat. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1980. 94 pp., illus. Paper. Reviewed by S. 1. Clerk* This catalogue of an exhibition of Mir6’s paintings held at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (20 March-8 June 1980) and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (27 June-I7 August 1980) offers colour reproductions of a// the 45 paintings on display, covering the period from 1914 to 1974. Charles W. Millard contributes an analytical erudite essay on the artist’s oeuvre and this is followed by Judi Freeman’s Miro and the United States. She has also done the chronology on the artist. Millard traces the evolution of his work from his student drawings, influencesof Van Gogh, Fauvism, Cezanne, Matisse, Cubism to Surrealism. In all probability, Surrealism and its fragmentation has had a long-lasting effect on Mir6. But then he soon went far beyond. Surrealism enabled him to express his dream world; however, he has been an anarchist and a rebel against any tradition or cult whatsoever, even against nature. Thus, his painting has only elements, embryos of forms, but no form as such. One may at times be reminded of children’s scratcheson walls, etc. or of the prehistoric cave paintings. On the other hand, while Mir6 has further evolved the lyricism of colourfrom the realizations of the Fauves and Matisse, his palette (overall) is essentially restricted to a few elementary colours-black, yellow, green, vermilion, blue. Even these are used sparingly, but with what an accuracy and an assurance! Perhaps more fascinating, Miro’s painting has a peculiar plastic quality despite the fact that there is neither subject nor object, neither volume nor logic in the construction. Millard highlights Miro’s love for poetry and its influence on his significant titles (‘the title is not a literal illustration ofthe picture, nor is the picture an illustration of the title’-Jacques Dupin as quoted by Millard) and the heavy indebtedness of Mir6’s Surrealism (of the early 1930s) to Picasso. There is also a detailed reference to Mir6’s series known as ‘Constellations’executed in gouache and oil on paper (begun during 1940141 and culminating in the mid-1950s). One may or may not agree but yet be tempted to quote Millard’s conclusion: ‘By now it is clear that, with Matisse and Picasso, Miro is one of the three giants of European modernism in this century, and indeed, his achievement may be even more sustained and more varied than that of his compatriot. Judi Freeman traces Miro’s links with the U.S.A. She is convinced that he has influenced the American abstract expressionists such as Gorky and Pollock and that his own work, in turn, has been ‘stimulated by their innovations’. Directions 1981. Exhibition Catalogue. Miranda McClintic. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1981. 80 pp.. illus. Paper. Reviewed by Henry P.Raleigh** Modern art curators, like art critics, may optimistically view contemporary artistic pluralism as an exciting re-evaluation of something, a promising exploration of something, or a vigorous hint of something to come. Failing any of these, the curator may abandon hope of locating new trends or movements and resignedly invent fanciful metaphoric contexts within which to fit whatever art is available. This latter course has been taken by Miranda McClintic, the organizing curator for this exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The catalogue...