Miro: Sculptor.

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Miro was the artistic hero of my adolescence.

In the Fifth Form I borrowed a wonderfully illustrated book containing lots of beautifully reproduced plates of his paintings. When I returned the book to the school library it may have been a couple of plates short. I realise I have just incriminated myself in a minor case of art theft, but in mitigation I honestly believe that those two Miro paintings cheered me up more than anything else (even masturbation, and I was fifteen for fucks sake) during my middle mid-teens on a drab and hostile council estate in Middleton.

I didn’t know what the heck Miro thought he was up to but I knew the world he conjured up on canvas – one of the works on my wall was nothing more than a vivid blue background, a few black blobs that looked as if they were up to something, and maybe a red stick-like object – looked infinitely better than the one I’d grown up with. Miro’s imagination was vibrant, witty, playful and the exact opposite of the solemnity my “O” level art teacher wanted to instil in us uncivilised little beasts.

Miro was my kind of guy.

So I was looking forward to going to The Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Wednesday night to see the imaginatively titled, Miro: Sculptor (to be fair, what else would you call an exhibition of Miro’s sculptures?) with a bunch of other Culture Vultures bloggers.

The exhibition is in the Underground Gallery and Gardens. We mainly got to see stuff in the gallery – we didn’t get to Wakefield till 6:30, so wandering in the gardens would have presented certain health and safety issues – but there’s plenty there to make you want to go back for more. Not just sculpture; there are plenty of paintings, on display I suppose to provide a kind of reassuring backdrop to the less familiar work dotted around the place.

I have to admit I found the paintings more immediately satisfying. In my subconscious mind Miro is A4, glossy, a little smudged with my fingerprints, and smells of whatever rank chemical the publishing industry used to coat art books back in the 70’s, so I wasn’t prepared for the scale. They seemed vast. And they were much darker than I’d expected, more tormented and angst ridden. That may have had something to do with the sheer amount of black – what looked like thin, delicate lines on miniature reproductions are actually thick bands and broad stripes of intense black. Much more negative than I’d imagined. Nastier. Nightmarish.

The sculpture seemed positively cheerful in comparison. It’s not just the colour – probably less than a third of the pieces indoors are poster paint bright – but even the biggest, blackest, boldest things have a sense of daftness about them, like something babyish that’s been blown up out of all proportion. In fact, the overwhelming impression is of something childlike – not childish! Miro doesn’t baby talk to us – but the obsession with bums and mums, moons and dicky birds, and figures that look like gigantic teddy bears and robots, seems to suggest that he certainly was in touch with his inner bairn

We were told that a lot of these pieces were public art but there’s nothing monumental or imposing about them. Miro was Spanish (well, Catalan, but let’s not argue) and lived through some pretty horrendous times. He must have seen plenty of art that was intended to dwarf the individual and make the viewer fearful and cowed. Fascists aren’t renowned for their sense of frivolity, are they. I’m pretty sure Miro’s response to his times was political in the broadest sense – his intense feeling for the farcical, foolish, fanciful side of human nature is subversive enough for me. His sculpture is human scale, approachable and appeals to our more sociable side as a species. I think it’s significant that there was a lot of amiable chuckling going on on Wednesday evening, often instigated by the gallery staff themselves . . . and that doesn’t happen very often!

The best thing that you could say about one of these events is that you can’t wait to go back and spend some proper time there.

Who wants to come with me? Let’s organise a party.

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