Joan Miró

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Curt Burgauer, Zurich (acquired by 1964. Sold: Christie's, London, 6th February 2001, lot 72)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

London, Tate Gallery & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Joan Miró, 1964, no. 254
St. Gallen, Kunstmuseum, Aus der Sammlung Erna und Curt Burgauer, 1986, no. 51, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Vaduz, Liechtensteinische Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Joan Miró: Skulptur, Graphik, Malerei, 1997, no. 85, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
St. Gallen, Kunstmuseum, Das lebenslängliche Interview - von der klassischen Moderne zur naiven Kunst aus der Sammlung Erna und Curt Burgauer, 1999

Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró, Life and Work, London, 1962, no. 875, illustrated p. 566 (with incorrect measurements)
Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné. Paintings, Paris, 2001, vol. III, no. 994, illustrated in colour p. 251 (with incorrect measurements)
Magazine Investir, no. 1499, October 2002, illustrated

The board is stable and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. This work is in very good original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the background is slightly stronger and warmer in the original.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Miró's vibrant Vipère exaspéré devant l'oiseau rouge was painted during the period that marked the dawning of a new era in modern art, and is a fine example of the artist's post-war work. Executed in 1955, it combines Miró's love of signs and symbols with a thematic narrative that is at once passionate, playful and intensely creative. Its title expresses the whimsy and flight of fancy that characterised Miró's best paintings, and the composition itself also presents a mix of poetic lyricism, radical abstraction, and semiotic complexity that was groundbreaking among the avant-garde during this period.   

 

In Miró's most successful works, his remarkable visual vocabulary strikes a perfect balance between abstraction and image-signs. There is always energy and movement in these pictures and never a sense of stasis. Moreover, each work is the result of active and ongoing improvisation that renders a precise interpretation impossible. But by the 1950s Miró heightened his audience's engagement with his art by giving his canvases poetic titles. The artist had experimented with incorporating poetry, or lyrical text, into his pictures in the late 1920s, but then largely rejected the use of highly descriptive titles over the next two decades. His return to using language as a didactic tool was a major shift in his art in the 1940s, allowing him to create compositions that were much more engaging for his audience. 

 

As Margit Rowell wrote: 'Miró's use of evocative poetic titles became more systematic in the late forties and early fifties [...] In the late twenties and throughout the thirties – those years immediately following his poem paintings – the artist shunned titles almost completely. The Constellations of 1940-41 (fig. 1) marked the beginning of the use of long poetic titles as an accompaniment like words to music, perhaps inspired by the poetry the artist had been writing in the late 1930s or perhaps inspired by music itself. But otherwise, Miró's titles throughout the years remained relatively matter-of-fact: Paintings, Woman and Birds, and so on. In the late forties Miró showed a new interest in titles conceived as distinct poetic phrases. Again it would seem that Miró felt the need for a verbal accompaniment so that his motifs would be taken not at face value but as allusive poetic images' (M. Rowell, Joan Miró, Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, p. 228).

 

In the case of the present work, the title of the painting clarifies the action it depicts, adding a narrative that would be otherwise indecipherable based on the images alone. In 1955 Miró executed several other works on board, which bear similarly elucidating titles. Descriptions such as The Moon's Brightness Sparks the Dance of the Dragonfly (fig. 2) or Woman Hypnotised by Rays of Dusk Grazing the Plain (fig. 3) entice the viewer to consider each element of the composition more closely. These lyrical titles assign identities to otherwise unrelated images, creating a new visual vocabulary of signs and symbols from which the viewer is left to piece together the events of the scene. 

 

When Miró painted this work in 1955, he had already become acquainted with the new techniques and aesthetic agenda of the Abstract Expressionists. He first saw their work in New York in 1947, and the experience, the artist would later recall, was like 'a blow to the solar plexus.' Several young painters, including Jackson Pollock, were crediting Miró as their inspiration for their wild, paint-splattered canvases. Miró was both flattered and a bit awed by the acknowledgement, not knowing immediately what to think of it. But in the years that followed he created works that responded to the enthusiasm of this younger generation of American painters and the spontaneity of their art. The paintings he created at the end of the 1940s and 1950s are a fascinating response to these new trends of abstraction, but also they show Miró's allegiance to his own artistic pursuits. 'For me a form is never something abstract,' he said at the end of the 1940s, 'it is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else. For me painting is never form for form's sake' (M. Rowell, op. cit., p. 207). 

 

 

 

Fig. 1, Joan Miró, Chiffres et constellations amoureux d'une femme, 1941, gouache and oil wash on paper, The Art Institute of Chicago

Fig. 2, Joan Miró, L'Eclat de la lune déclenche la danse de la libellule, 1955, oil on cardboard, The Art Institute of Chicago

Fig. 3, Joan Miró, Femme hypnotisée par les rayons crépusculaires frôlant la plaine, 1955, oil on cardboard, Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Japan