胡安·米羅

克勞德·艾爾桑特，巴黎（應購自藝術家）

威廉·N·科普利伉儷，奧爾日河畔隆格蓬及紐約（屆1964年購藏並售出：紐約蘇富比，1978年5月17日，拍品編號71）

A·阿弗烈·陶博曼購自上述拍賣

紐約，現代藝術博物館及洛杉磯郡立美術館，「米羅」，1959年，品號42（品號41位於洛杉磯）

倫敦，泰特美術館及蘇黎世美術館（由英國藝術協會舉辦），「胡安·米羅」，1964年，品號96

紐約，現代藝術博物館；洛杉磯郡立美術館及芝加哥藝術學院，「達達主義、超現實主義及它們的遺產」，1968年，品號234，圖錄載圖

倫敦，英國藝術協會，海沃德畫廊，「回顧達達與超現實主義」，1978年，品號11.27a，圖錄載圖（題為《桌子鬍子》，紀年1927年，尺寸有誤）

紐約，現代藝術博物館，「胡安·米羅回歸展」，1993-94年，品號97，圖錄彩色載圖

瓦倫西亞，IVAM中心胡里歐·岡薩雷斯，「超現實主義之物」，1997年

詹姆斯·斯羅爾·索比，《米羅》，紐約，1959年，第77頁載圖

保羅·沃爾頓，《達利/米羅—超現實主義大師》，紐約，1966年，第64頁彩色載圖

瑪吉特·羅韋爾，《胡安·米羅》，米蘭，1970年，品號43，彩色載圖

阿拉恩·茹弗鲁瓦及胡安·特西多爾，《米羅雕塑》，巴黎，1973年，品號16，第193頁載圖

克里斯托弗·格林，《畢加索和米羅，1930年，魔術師、孩子和藝術家》，瓦倫西亞，1991年，品號9，第38頁

《合家知識、視覺及娛樂》，1996年6月，第4期，第10頁彩色載圖

雅克·杜品及阿里亞納·勒隆·邁納烏，《胡安·米羅：油畫圖錄全集》，卷II，193141，巴黎，2000年，品號359，第37頁彩色載圖

Please contact the Impressionist and Modern Art Department at (212) 606-7360 for the condition report for this lot.
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.
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A rare masterpiece of "anti-painting," La Porte (Objet) provides a glimpse into the development of Miró's personal iconography. Resistant to categorization, Miró rejected labels and artistic agendas, choosing instead to discover a profoundly individual artistic vocabulary. Miró created this work during an intensely creative moment in his career, a time when he broke away from discernible influences and created wholly unique works. He generates here an eloquent dialogue between painting and the incorporation of found objects. Though redolent of both Dadaism and Surrealism, with a visionary expression, La Porte transcends the movements that dominated European Modernism at the time.  

Throughout the 1920s, Miró fostered an autonomous identity amid the circle of artists active in Paris. Associating with the Dadaists and subsequently the Surrealists, Miró began to develop his artistic voice. Through his fellow Spaniard and good friend, Pablo Picasso, Miró would meet many of the luminaries that dominated this culturally thriving metropolis. Though he absorbed the surrounding ethos and appreciated the aesthetic advances made by Picasso, Miró maintained a singular voice through his paintings. By the end of the decade, he had developed a poetic vocabulary that would wind its way throughout the remainder of his oeuvre. Miró created the present work at the end of this sojourn in Paris, just before he was forced to move back to Barcelona in 1932.

Collage became an important focus for Miró in the early 1930s. He looked beyond the myopic definitions of painting and searched for, in his own words, "anti-painting." He incorporated found objects onto the surfaces of his paintings, while playfully relying upon the rectilinear restrictions that had dominated the history of Western painting. This use of fully dimensional collage is not without precedent and finds a parallel in the works of Dadaists Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters. However, Miró's ability to integrate the elements in the current work – circular wooden pieces, twine, sandpaper and thread – with the painted passages is entirely unique from Dada experiments. The result is an unprecedented choreography of sculptural object and painterly illusion.

The artist's use of collage was noted among his contemporaries. Catalan art critic, Sebastià Gasch, visited the artist's studio shortly after he painted the current work. Anne Umland writes of his experience there: "Gasch, following a visit to Montroig with Miró's friend and avant-garde patron Joan Prats in late September 1931, described the creative ambience in which Miró produced these works, comparing the artist's studio to a 'bric-a-brac store' filled with 'very bizarre objects,' including 'cane roots that resemble black idols, skeletal fragments found at the beach that resemble Egyptian sculptures, cork with incrustations of mollusks that have rich qualities, shells, dolls smashed, nails, pebbles, little mirrors of the carrer de la Boqueria, postcards from the carrer Nou.' Despite their oddity, Gasch went on to write, the objects in and of themselves are insignificant; it is only in Miró's juxtaposition of the materials that they are transformed to 'take on... an intense and penetrating life'" (A. Umland, Joan Miró, Painting and Anti-Painting, 1927-1937 [exhibition catalogue], The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008-09, p. 102).

The originality of Miró's works from the mid-1930s would have an immense effect on both his contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists. Vividly explored in a series of exhibitions at the Fondation Beyeler is the clear dialogue between Miró's paintings and the sculptures of his close friend Alexander Calder. Indeed, the intersecting forms in the present work find a parallel with Calder's mobiles and stabiles executed a few years later. Echoes of Miró's biomorphic formology can be found in works by other Surrealists, such as Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst. The personal iconography extant in the present work, however, is entirely unique to Miró. In this composition, the artist has embellished a wooden door with feathers and other found objects, adding paint to the composition to create an engaging visual ensemble.

The plasticity which pervades La Porte characterizes the strongest of Miró's compositions and became a beacon for artists in the latter half of the 20th century. Miró arrived at this formal language through years of personal exploration. Carolyn Lanchner has written of the "...force of his determination to assert a clear identity for his art. In order to express his particular experience of reality, he had somehow to reimagine the way painting could be made, to think his way out of the conventions it had thus far fostered. Like all the truly original modern artists, he had – as he put it, with less originality than urgency – 'to go beyond painting.' In September 1923 he described his efforts to his friend J. F. Ràfols: 'I know that I am following very dangerous paths, and I confess that at times I am seized with panic like that of the hiker who finds himself on paths never before explored, but this doesn't last, thanks to the discipline and seriousness with which I am working" (C. Lanchner, Joan Miró [exhibition catalogue], The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1993-94, p. 17).

La Porte (Objet) has a highly distinguished provenance taking in some of the most influential collectors and patrons of the 20th century. The first owner of the present work was the banker Claude Hersaint, who, alongside his wife Hélène Anavi, amassed one of the finest collections of contemporary art in Paris, and befriended many of the key artists of the time including, Balthus who painted both their portraits. The next owner was the American collector, artist and promoter of Surrealist art, William N. Copley. Copley's outstanding collection was partly acquired by the means of his own gallery in Los Angeles – he generally had to purchase ten percent of each exhibition in order to ensure a few sales for the artists he represented, including Magritte and Ernst. Copley moved to Paris in 1949 and continued to add to his impressive collection, most of which was dispersed after his death in 1978 and 1979 at Sotheby's in New York, where Mr. Taubman acquired the present work.