| Artist: | Miro, Joan |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Self-Portrait | |
| Date of Work: | 1937-1938 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | Post-War Fantasy | |
| Movement: | Surrealism | |
| Medium: | pencil, crayon & oil on canvas | |
| Subject: Miro's self-portrait depicts the artist as a "seer," a visionary poet of the unconscious. The image appears as if the skin itself had been peeled off so we can see into the inner self. A linear tracery animates the scene and defines the figure in a lyrically abstract way. One eye's pupil turns into a starburst form, while the other is a sun. The unconscious seems to surface here in highly abstracted picture sign-symbols. Miro is interested in the revelation of inner life. The picture is an "inscape" with focus placed on both the vision of the inner eye and the mental life of the inner "I." Style: works a linear tracery that has an allover, rhythmic quality. The image is airy and delicate, amlost calligraphic. Using free association, Miro seems to discover his motifs, shapes, and forms in the act of drawing and 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. 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. | ||
