Joan Miró: Paper and Poetry selected prints and illustrated books

LESLIE SACKS FINE ART Brentwood

Joan Miró: Paper and Poetry selected prints and illustrated books

Exhibition closing this Saturday, April 12

Surrealism had an enormous impact on the art world following its beginnings  in France ca. 1924, directly influencing artists as diverse as Motherwell  and Picasso. Only a relatively small number of artists remained anchored in  this movement after World War II.  Among the most prominent of these was  Joan Miró whose view and practice of art were and remain revolutionary. Surrealism was concerned with undermining our preconceived notions of both  art and reality at large. This is evident in such iconic surrealist images as Dali's  ubiquitous clock draped over a tree limb which called into question the reality  of mathematically measured time, and Magritte's painting of a pipe (Los  Angeles County Museum of Art) emblazoned with the phrase, " Ceci n'est  pas  une pipe - This is not a pipe," which indeed it is not, but rather a picture of  a pipe. Miró's works frequently invoke the mythic, and his vocabulary has a  pictographic quality not unlike images of the earth and sky painted by tribal  societies all over the world since time immemorial.  Such pictographs,  as frequently seen in petroglyphs, sometimes developed into sophisticated  systems of writing, as in the case of the first Chinese characters which are  pictograms. Examples of pictographic and calligraphic images are seen  throughout the works in this show.  There is also an innocence about the simplicity of Miro's palette that  evokes the sense of childlike wonder adults can still feel gazing up at  a clear night sky. By conjuring this magical, poetic state of awe  and wonderment, Miro undermines the mundane state of mind by which  we all too frequently limit our world view. An important part of this exhibition is the display of illustrated  books which are Miró's interpretations of works of poetry. These are not  bound books but rather loose leaf portfolios of prints and sheets of  letterpress text. (The prints in these books can be framed as one would  frame any stand-alone print while retaining the rest of the book in its  portfolio.) The complete catalogue of Miró 's works in this genre,  meticulously compiled by the Swiss scholar and publisher Patrick Cramer , a close associate of Leslie Sacks, records 262 books, albums and  catalogues. These books with their beautiful hand printed images  reflect not only the aforementioned associations with poetry,  mythology, pictographs and calligraphy but also the rich European  heritage of illuminated manuscripts.

LESLIE SACKS FINE ART

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