Joan Miró – The Ladder of Escape (2012)

Joan Miró – The Ladder of Escape (2012)
Documentary from The National Gallery of Art
Director/Producer/Writer: Carroll Moore
Studio: National Gallery/Microcinema International MC-1308 [5/29/12]
Video: 16:9 color
Audio: English PCM
Subtitles: English for Spanish and Catalan portions
Extras: A gallery of Miro works seen in the film, set to music; “Barcelona: What Miro Saw;” “Miro’s Squiggles, Blobs, and Beasts – the amusing abstract and realistic images in his paintings
Length: 30 minutes
Rating: ****
This short film was made to accompany a major touring exhibition from the National Gallery, which had the same subtitle. It is a retrospective survey of the politically-engaged art of Joan Miro – probably among the most easily-recognized of all modern artists, and reproduced everywhere – not just in books.
Miro was in strong opposition to the fascist government of Franco, but unlike Picasso – who left Spain – he exiled himself to the island of Mallora, where his wife was from. He had a strong Catalan nationalism and it is reflected in his early paintings of his parents’ farm at Mont-roig del Camp, some distance from where he was born in Barcelona. It was here that he developed a symbolism and nationalism that he would have thruout his career.
In 1924 he join the Surrealists in Paris and was felt by their leader Breton to be the most surrealistic of them all. He had a symbolic, schematic language of little forms and designs which became increasingly abstract. Some of his favorite subjects were child-like images of women, birds and the moon. Events of the Spanish Civil are seen in some of his paintings. His The Sun, the Moon and One Star – later renamed Miro’s Chicago – is in the Loop area of Chicago, across the street from the Chicago Picasso sculpture. Later in life Miro wanted to “annihilate painting” and influenced by Jackson Pollack and deconstructivist approaches dripped paint on the canvases and even walked on them.
The film has archival footage and photos shot in Catalonia, interviews with figures in the art world, and closeups of many of Miro’s paintings. Ed Harris is the narrator.
—John Sunier