Symbioverse

From an introduction by Robert Lubar Messeri, Madrid. January 2017.

“The central simile of Taillandier’s text defines Miró’s working methods at this time: the physical labour involved in the creative process, the need to allow thoughts to germinate and take root, the studio as a laboratory for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, and a deep engagement with the material elements of his art. With these working principles firmly established, Miró would push his art in new directions over the course of the next two and a half decades.

Rather than painting “things” – a woman, a bird, a landscape – Miró found his subjects in the creative process itself, raising the idea of chance and spontaneity to the status of foundational principles.

For Miró, art making was a kind of reckoning, a journey across uncharted terrains guided only by instinct and intuition. A line might take shape in the void, an anonymous gesture might define a new visual universe, or an object found on a beach might provoke a poetic spark. Taking his cues from the physical world, each time Mirò entered his studio, he embarked on a voyage of discovery that was at once artistic and spiritual. To work like a gardener was to create life itself – the autonomous life of a visual universe that, in the artist’s words, was a world set in motion.”

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