| Artist: | Miro, Joan |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Birth of the World | |
| Date of Work: | 1925 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | Post-War Fantasy | |
| Movement: | Surrealism | |
| Medium: | OIl | |
| Subject: "Birth of the World" is a lyrical example of dream painting and psychic automatism. The starting point of the image was an accidental blackberry jam stain. Miro worked outward from there in a free association, stream-of-consciousness way to explore the marvelous possibilities of chance (contrast to the Dadaists' more ironic use of chance to point out the absurd rather than the marvelous). No recognizable figures or objects take form; instead, Miro creates suggestive shapes and linking lines that form a delicate network of abstracted sign-symbols, which are like traces of an unconscious language. If this is an image of the unconscious, so to speak, it appears as a non-gravitational universe that is no longer a direct extension of the viewer's space. This is not the closed universe of the Old Masters or those bound by gravity. This is the universe as seen through the poet's telescope or microscope. Perhaps it is ultimately a metaphor for the creative process itself, which is Miro's true theme. Like the creation of a universe, this is a scene of "genesis." Style: begins with the void (the white canvas), followed by chaos (the blackberry jam stain and spots). He then works as a "seer," a visionary poet of the unconscious. Using free association, he only discovers his motifs, shapes, and forms in the act of painting itself. Focus is on what unfolds in the creative process (as in the surrealist game, "The Exquistie Cadaver"). He embraces the surreal idea of psychic automatism, the undirected play of thought. The scale of the canvas (8' x 6') challenges the concept of easel painting, and paves the way for the abstract expressionists who will follow after WWII. The atmospheric wash in the background is a spatial field beyond rational measure and without gravity, suggesting an infinite expanse; the unconscious as unlimited and boundless. Context: Miro offers us a more playful, stream-of-consciousness, abstract surreal vision than the highly calculated, technicolor, precisionist images of Dali's paranoaic-critical method. Miro puts the emphasis on process (dream painting) rather than product (painted dreams), but both affirm the unconscious as a valid source of creativity. Miro sees the unconscious, however, as a secretly coded language of abstract sign-symbols. | ||
