One of the pre-eminent works associated with the early days of surrealism, Miro's masterpiece currently resides in the Albright-Knox Art gallery in Buffalo, where I've had the pleasure of viewing it on multiple occasions (I even wrote a paper about it for an Art History class as an undegraduate way back when).
Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequins, 1924
A big part of the painting's appeal is it's playfulness, and the cryptic narrative that it implies as you try to work out exactly what is going on. The dreamlike nature of the figures, suggestive of real animals and anthropomorphic household items, but hardly depicted in a realistic manner (or even as you might see them in a Disney cartoon) lends a cool dreamlike quality to the proceedings. While surrealism is, I think, inherently comic in so many ways, it's humor is often black and disturbing (what did Breton say? that the ultimate surrealist act is to open fire with a machine gun on a subway platform?), which is clearly not the case with Miro (in this painting or really most of his other work). I saw a self-portrait of Miro many years ago in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and have never been able to find since (either on subsequent visits to MOMA or in reproduction); but it depicted the artist as someone you could imagine inhabiting the Carnival of Harlequins without being out of place at all. In other words, the kind of guy I'd like to have met.
A big part of the painting's appeal is it's playfulness, and the cryptic narrative that it implies as you try to work out exactly what is going on. The dreamlike nature of the figures, suggestive of real animals and anthropomorphic household items, but hardly depicted in a realistic manner (or even as you might see them in a Disney cartoon) lends a cool dreamlike quality to the proceedings. While surrealism is, I think, inherently comic in so many ways, it's humor is often black and disturbing (what did Breton say? that the ultimate surrealist act is to open fire with a machine gun on a subway platform?), which is clearly not the case with Miro (in this painting or really most of his other work). I saw a self-portrait of Miro many years ago in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and have never been able to find since (either on subsequent visits to MOMA or in reproduction); but it depicted the artist as someone you could imagine inhabiting the Carnival of Harlequins without being out of place at all. In other words, the kind of guy I'd like to have met.
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