joan miro

Is it Miro's birthday today? I suppose I could click around and find out, but why not just ask? I am not sure if it is even legal to show Google's logo here. Hopefully it's ok with them...

I used to have a theory that Catalonians were particularly gifted, and held the key to life. It was after I saw painting after painting by Miro at the retrospective at MoMA back in 1993 that I came up with this thought. I was lulled into a meditation on his forms. That his symbols, or "constellations," as they are sometimes called, were representations in his own language of something Greater.

The same thing happened to me at the Musee Picasso in 1994. After seeing painting after painting by Picasso, particularly examples I had never seen before, I had an epiphany. I also sought out everything I could read on Gaudi, the third great Catalonian (in no particular hierarchical order really), to unlock the great Truths I believed they all held. I wrote on a rather grandiose to-do list that I still keep in my sewing drawer because it amuses me, to research Gaudi and begin to make connections between his architecture and the universe, and then start formulating some sort of thesis about these three from Catalan.

It should be noted that I also investigated Salvador Dali, yet another great Catalonian, and read The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, which was quite good; but in the end, he really didn't fit in with my theories...

Hmm. Perhaps a pilgrimage is in order. Catalan might be a good place to visit.