As some of you may know, I studied art history in college and grad school and although my focus has since shifted to contemporary art, I still love my classics. On Art History Tuesdays, each week I will feature one of my favorite artists I studied in my art history classes and pair them up with a selection of contemporary ‘incarnations’ of what I feel they were all about conceptually or visually. Enjoy!

MIRÓ: HARMONIOUS LIKE BUGS?

JOAN MIRÓ (º1893 - †1983) was a Spanish graphic designer, painter, sculptor, and ceramist from Catalan, Spain. Born in Barcelona, he is still seen as one of the fathers of surrealism, a style revolving all around dreams, psychoanalysis, and free association. The movement saw its peak between the 1920s and 40s, but the style is still very present in contemporary art, design, and illustration. His move towards abstraction has made Miró especially influential to artists and designers throughout the ages. To be honest, though - I was never a great fan of his work until my boyfriend (a lawyer, usually not the least interested in art) pointed out the brilliance in his images. As often happens when you decide to pay more attention to a thing, you start to see the charm of it. And so I have come to appreciate Miró. His work has a very naive, yet completely balanced feel to it. Although the placement of figures and lines across the picture planes might seem random at first, when you pay more attention you see how Miró craftily guides your eye from one shape to the other - the mirrored circle shapes, the scattered dark spots forming a diagonal, it's all showing you connections between seemingly unconnected shapes. Like associations and dreams. Or bugs and amoebae (<-- my boyfriend's comment). More information: MoMA

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

The first contemporary artist I associate with Miró, is San Francisco-based Mia Christopher. Her work has the same rhythm, I think. A cadence of scattered abstracted objects and figures, coming together in form and color, leaving much of the connections for you to find through the layout and positioning of things. Also, the colors, I think. The expressive puzzle pieces fit together in color, turning it all into a big happy orchestrated mess. Links: Website | Etsy Shop

MIRÓ'S GREEK LOVECHILD

Next up, Best Before, or Andreas Karaoulanis. This Greek illustrator and animator shows us something I think Miró himself would have loved if he could have seen it. Karaoulanis has the same enormously expressive style in his line and collaged based work we see in Miró, and turns these into dream-like (sometimes nightmarish) animations. It's like Miró and Karaoulanis had a lovechild with Adobe's flash. Brilliant and kind of eerie. Link: Blog/Portfolio

LOST IN TAGS

And to be honest... that's where I ran out of ideas. I couldn't think of a third artist (besides one I had already featured in another AHT post). But you know, I am a modern gal. And so I turned to Twitter, where @hvercauter offered up a great suggestion: DeltaInc. What I like about this suggestion is that although I saw the resemblance mostly in the colors at first, after rethinking this for a couple of hours, I think I see another, more important point of comparison. I think that DeltaInc has released the same kind of abstracting, associative thinking to graffiti and contemporary patterning as Miró applied to his own circumstances. I think the 3d wall pieces and room filling installations by DeltaInc can be seen as taking the art from the streets literally onto the streets (or, you know, gallery). And I like it. So thank you Hans Vercauter for this tip! Link: Website


Whoa! Sorry for the whole lot of words there. Well, I needed to make it up to you a little because I hadn't done one of these in a while. I really need to go to museums more often and get my inspiration going!

Anyways, see you tomorrow and let me know whether Miró is your thing or whether his works kind of creep you out...


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