I recently visited Fundació Joan Miró in Montjuïc, Barcelona.
Apart from drinking in a lot of beautiful paintings, there was a lot to learn about Miró and how he became such a celebrated artist - such success within your lifetime doesn't happen by accident. For instance:
1. He wasn't ashamed to be a borrower and dilettante. After hanging around in Paris, he internalised surrealism and 'anti-painting'- trying to fuse other art from like poetry into his work. He got some of his best ideas and aesthetics from Japanese artists and got so excited about the emergence of graffiti that he went back to some of his 1950s paintings and did a bit of doodling over the top of them.
2. He didn't leave his art to chance or inspiration. He treated it like a job and lived a disciplined life for an artist who hung around with Ernest Hemingway pre-WW2. He took pride in working "
with the same intensity and the same humility as a worker who works all day to support his family" and even pointedly responded to a Surrealist questionnaire (wonder what that's like?) with pointed advice that all artists need 'military-like' discipline.
3. He found inspiration despite hardship and hunger in his early career, not giving up but using hungry hallucinations as inspiration for his art:
"How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well, I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't had any supper. I saw things and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..."
4. He kept body in shape as well as mind. For his whole life. According to a very interesting book called the
Saints of Modern Art, he kept in 'taut' physical shape with boxing, swimming and jumping rope no matter where he was.
5. He adjusted his art to reach 'normal' people. Miró grew in his interest in appealing to the masses and in order to reach them, he used new means of expression. He designed large murals and monumental sculptures and, and he became interested in integrating the arts into architecture and the landscape.
The idea reminds me a lot of the David Byrne / St Vincent song 'I Should Watch TV' which includes long Walt Whitman quotes about the need to know your fellow man (great interview about the song and others on their album
here).
Some useful advice as well as a whole load of visual inspiration. That is why you should build museums into your holidays.
Fundació Joan Miró
