Miró: The Experience of Seeing; Late Works, 1963–1981

Perhaps the most generous part of this companion to the touring exhibition of the same name is the inclusion of more than 50 color images of modernist Joan Miró's paintings and sculpture. The sumptuous reproductions, which show works created during the artist's mature period, offer the opportunity to observe minute details of Miró's surface treatments. Three literary offerings are included: a conversation with filmmaker Pere Portabella, a younger contemporary of Miró's; a bullet-pointed essay by Aparicio (chief curator of sculpture, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid), and writing by Charles Palermo (Alumni Memorial Term Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, Coll. of William and Mary). Portabella discusses Miró's generosity and their friendship, as well as the profound impact the artist had on Catalan modernity in Spain. The two essays offer a more complete portrait of the artist who is so often identified with historical prewar modernity. Aparicio's piece succinctly connects later works with the entirety of Miro's oeuvre, while Palermo wonders whether Miró's signature, his repertory of symbols, represents a return to prehistoric cave art or a projection forward to high modernism. Readers learn that Miró's time in Mallorca in the mid-1950s, where he lived out the decades of Franco's dictatorship in relative safety and obscurity, allowed the artist to unpack years of work, thus confronting his own history. In some cases, older works were literally joined with newer pieces.