Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, Tate Modern | reviews, news & interviews
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, Tate Modern
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape, Tate Modern
The Catalan artist lurched from style to style - and the results weren't always pretty
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
'Dog Barking at the Moon': Miró used recurring motifs in his work, including the ladder, the dog and the moon
I used to love Joan Miró. Those cute biomorphic forms; those elegantly elusive doodles; those engagingly befuddled, cartoonish faces, each staring forlornly out of the cosmic soup of Miró’s playful imagination; and, of course, those bright, jazzy colours. But I used to love all that in the way that I loved Millais’s Ophelia floating in her deathbed weedy pond, or in the same way that I was taken in by Dalí's “disturbing” melting clocks. You see, it was just one big teenage crush, and, like all heady teenage crushes, I got over it. And when the infatuation faded, I realised there just wasn’t enough there to sustain a properly grown-up, meaningful relationship.
I used to love Joan Miró. Those cute biomorphic forms; those elegantly elusive doodles; those engagingly befuddled, cartoonish faces, each staring forlornly out of the cosmic soup of Miró’s playful imagination; and, of course, those bright, jazzy colours. But I used to love all that in the way that I loved Millais’s Ophelia floating in her deathbed weedy pond, or in the same way that I was taken in by Dalí's “disturbing” melting clocks. You see, it was just one big teenage crush, and, like all heady teenage crushes, I got over it. And when the infatuation faded, I realised there just wasn’t enough there to sustain a properly grown-up, meaningful relationship.
Share this article
Add comment
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more Visual arts
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
Support our GoFundMe appeal
Vanessa Bell, MK Gallery review - diving into and out of abstraction
A variation of styles as the Bloomsbury artist breaks free from Victorian mores
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundaries
Two artists, 50 years apart, invite audience participation
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern review - adolescent angst indefinitely extended
The artist who refused to grow up
Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review - utterly sublime smog
Never has pollution looked so compellingly beautiful
Michael Craig-Martin, Royal Academy review - from clever conceptual art to digital decor
A career in art that starts high and ends low
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - passions translated into paint
Turmoil made manifest
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rage
Fifty years of political protest by a master craftsman
Dominique White: Deadweight, Whitechapel Gallery review - sculptures that seem freighted with history
Dunked in the sea to give them a patina of age, sculptures that feel timeless
Bill Viola (1951-2024) - a personal tribute
Video art and the transcendent
In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s, Royal Academy review - famous avant-garde Russian artists who weren't Russian after all
A glimpse of important Ukrainian artists
Francis Alÿs: Ricochets, Barbican review - fun for the kids, yet I was moved to tears
How to be serious and light hearted at the same time
Comments
...