Unpacking Miro's Box of Tricks: A retrospective response to The Magical Universe of Joan Miro: the Artist's Link to France and its Collections at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, 18 September to 7 December 2002.

Abstract

If Miro's legion of biographers, critics and apologists are to be believed, the enigmatic Catalan artist's reputation as a 'modern master' and his consequently stellar status in the art historical firmament of the twentieth century seems to rest on three things: first amongst these is his prolific output, comprising a vast outpouring of work in a variety of media executed over nearly eight decades of artistic life. Second is his immense influence, both on his contemporaries in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as on the New York School of the 1940s, and the subsequent (some might say consequent) entrenchment of a certain kind of lyrical abstraction as the sine qua non of mainstream modern art.The third, and probably most significant factor is his fantastical and highly idiosyncratic artistic vision, the putative 'Magical Universe' of the title of the Standard Bank Gallery's recent exhibition. Indeed, this exhibition effectively reinforced all three these ideas, not least in its uncritical acceptance of the notion of Mir6 as 'one of Europe's most important artists', a selection of whose works had, at great expense and inconvenience, generously been 'curated specifically for ... Johannesburg' (Catalogue 2002:8, 9). Notwithstanding both such clumsy attempts at hagiography as well as some rather dubious works on display, the exhibition was nonetheless compelling.