Joan Miró's Spanish Playing Cards

Joan Miró was a Barcelona-born Spaniard who studied business and art as a teen, ultimately going in the direction of a business career. After a nervous breakdown he pursued a life in art. An art dealer, José Dalmau, helped him get his first solo exhibition in Barcelona.

The Spanish Playing Cards, on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, was produced in 1920 after a trip to Paris where he met Picasso for the first time. The painting shows the clear influence of the cubism in vogue at the time.

In Paris Miró took an interest in the influential Dada movement and also absorbed the ideas of the emerging Surrealists. Travels to the Netherlands resulted in influence by the Dutch Masters. By the late 1930's his work was included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York which later held his first major retrospective in 1941.

What's interesting to me is how varied the compositional elements are in this painting, especially when you zoom in on the details. Yet, in stepping back the fragmented scene hangs together and produces an effect as a whole. Here's a snippet from the museum website where this painting is briefly discussed.

EdNote: An exhibition titled Miró: The Experience of Seeing is now on display at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio featuring 50 of the artist's later paintings and sculptures.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it.

Robert Rauschenberg Would Have Been 90 Today

In visiting galleries around the country it's always exciting to discover another Rauschenberg piece that I hadn't seen before. Some of his famous combines, like the bed or the one with the goat and the tire (Monogram), can be found in the MOMA and San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. But traveling through other galleries over the years one is likely to discover, as I did in Allentown last year, a couple Rauschenberg works. Tuesday at the Minneapolis Institute of Art was no exception. 

When I was an art student in college I found Rauschenberg's work stimulating. A pre-cursor to Pop, which I did not find interesting at the time, I enjoyed seeing what he was doing, noticed articles in ArtForum and took a book out on him from the library. 

It's strange to think of how many of these artists we alive while we were in school, and were one determined one could have tracked him down probably and talked to him or visited his studio. But all most of us did was look in the books and magazines and appreciate the occasional pieces we saw in the museums. 

Thanks to Google, you can see more examples of his work here. And thanks to Bill Shipley there's a signature of his on my wall.

Mr. Rauschenberg passed away in 2008. He would have been 90 today.

Barrel Up, acrylic paint and screen print. 1990

Wordless Wednesday: From a Recent Visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Art