Preceding the Miro show at MOMA, the Charles White (and one
room of Brancusi) was in the same gallery space. Compare and contrast would be odd for this pairing
as they have so little to do with each other.
Miro was a jokester; his attitude seems to been like Picabia’s, his sort
of Surrealist colleague at one time in the insular European modernist project,
as shown repeatedly in the fabulous retrospective a few years ago. Nothing was serious by Picabia except the
incredible virtuosity with which he executed each series of jokes. Miro appears to be sincere in earlier pieces,
the landscapes and still lives and the large self portrait in pencil cannot settle
in one camp of serious; perhaps the starry eyes and patterns and details are
the message in the traditional framework of a look-like-me self-portrait. Miro moved on to be a cartoonist.
Diversion: who is the curator who wrote for one of the plaques next to a painting (The Family 1924), “flames extending from her heart”? Flames or roots or hairs they could be, but it’s not a heart at the center. It is a vagina. Like, duh.
The collection at MOMA casts Miro’s work as high art cartooning, a cast of characters (and body parts), sometimes little stories. Broad curvaceous outlines. Icons instead of photographic observation. Bright colors, usually flat but sometimes scribbled (such as pastel of opera singer). And the multiple styles, masterful handling of oil paint surface, but done with multiple jokes of “Portrait of a Man in Late 19th C. Frame”, the piece that feels more Duchamp or Picabian. Miro had incredible self-confident control.
Charles White’s drawings and paintings blew me away, but not a hint of the joking in Miro. All serious all the time. Always a message about the reality of people, their personal strivings or political, social, or commercial needs. This is art with a mission outside galleries, a mission to make us hear music, or to feel what it is to live in the ghetto or to work to change the world.
Two excellent shows back-to-back in one white box.
Diversion: who is the curator who wrote for one of the plaques next to a painting (The Family 1924), “flames extending from her heart”? Flames or roots or hairs they could be, but it’s not a heart at the center. It is a vagina. Like, duh.
The collection at MOMA casts Miro’s work as high art cartooning, a cast of characters (and body parts), sometimes little stories. Broad curvaceous outlines. Icons instead of photographic observation. Bright colors, usually flat but sometimes scribbled (such as pastel of opera singer). And the multiple styles, masterful handling of oil paint surface, but done with multiple jokes of “Portrait of a Man in Late 19th C. Frame”, the piece that feels more Duchamp or Picabian. Miro had incredible self-confident control.
Charles White’s drawings and paintings blew me away, but not a hint of the joking in Miro. All serious all the time. Always a message about the reality of people, their personal strivings or political, social, or commercial needs. This is art with a mission outside galleries, a mission to make us hear music, or to feel what it is to live in the ghetto or to work to change the world.
Two excellent shows back-to-back in one white box.
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