Joan Miró was a Spanish Surrealist artist who was born on the 20th April 1893 in Barcelona. He started drawing in school back in 1900, taking private lessons wit Señor Civil. In 1907 he went on to learn at a business college as well as taking lessons at a fine arts academy in La Lonja, Picasso had visited the academy back in 1895. His teachers were Modest Urgell and Josep Pascó.!Many of his early pieces, from 1912-1920, where still lives and landscapes influenced by his everyday environment of his parent's summer house in Montroig, while he was recovering from a typhoid fever after suffering from a nervous breakdown. During this time he also started to experiment with producing paintings while blindfolded and also with oil paints. He also met Ricart when he attended Gali's school of Arts. At this time he was painting life drawings of nude subjects using charcoals and chalks. By 1919, Cubism was beginning to become evident in his works, such as "Nude in the Mirror" and "Self Portrait" which Picasso purchased for his collection.!He went to Paris, where he met and got influenced by loads of other artists through the help of Art Dealer, Josep Dalmau, staying in France from 1920-1929 before marrying his wife, Pilar and decided to stay in Paris for good. Symbolism was beginning to become present in his work in 1923, such as the sun, stars, black solid circles and a bright use of colours. In 1930 he began to experiment even further with his style, working in other media, building sculptures. His second Self Portrait from 1937 shows his change of style, as it became looser but more symbolic and immersing.!In 1956 he made his final move, after moving to and through from Paris and Barcelona, to Palma de Mallorca, where the architect, Sert, built his studio house "Sons Abriñes". Two years later he finished the ceramic walls for the UNESCO building in Paris, which was a joint effort between him and his good friend, Artigas from 1955. From this, he received the Grand Award of the Guggenheim Foundation in 1959.!!

What if? Metropolis Artist: Joan Miró!

In  1968,  a  large  scale  exhibi4on  of  his  work,  named  "Year  of  Miró"  took  place,  where  Sert  designed,  commissioned  by  the  city  of  Barcelona,  and  built  a  museum  for  the  ar4st,  featuring  40  pain4ngs  by  him.  From  this  point  on  he  con4nued  to  go  on  trips  to  America  and  other  places  in  Europe  to  show  his  works  in  big  exhibi4ons.  The  year  of  his  90th  birthday,  1983,  was  celebrated  with  exhibi4ons  worldwide,  however,  Miró  health  was  also  declining,  leading  to  his  death  on  the  25th  of  December  the  same  year.  He  wasn't  just  a  painter,  he  designed  sets  for  ballet,  painted  ceramics,  sculptures,  engravings,  ceramic  panels  for  buildings.  Throughout  his  career  he  developed  many  different  styles  from  simple  pain4ngs  to  cubism,  from  surrealism  to  ceramics  and  sculptures.  Many  of  his  works  were  based  on  childhood  memories,  of  Tarrogana,  his  Father's  hometown,  which  was  a  rough,  wild  city,  where  it's  dream-­‐like  seVng  helped  with  the  produc4on  of  many  of  his  works.  While  some  of  his  pain4ngs  gave  off  a  sort  of  caveman  like  feel,  through  the  use  of  symbolism  and  colours  he  was  able  to  give  any  pain4ng  of  his  a  more  poe4c  and  in-­‐depth  feel,  even  if  it  was  just  from  the  4tle  he  gave  it.  His  Father  influenced  him  through  his  work  and  his  workspace,  as  he  cleaned  his  brushes  and  leY  his  studio  clean  just  like  an  engineer's  workshop.  Also,  the  way  he  used  colours  in  his  pieces,  the  mixture  of  bold  colours  contras4ng  to  solid  blacks  makes  the  majority  of  his  pieces  stand  out.  Even  in  his  early  days,  his  use  of  colours  were  free  flowing  and  bold  but  s4ll  had  a  technical  reason  as  to  why  he  placed  that  colour  where  he  placed  it.  "Miró  could  not  paint  a  spot  without  it  falling  in  the  right  place"  Miró  by  Twen4eth-­‐  Century  Masters  page  46  

What if? Metropolis: Travelogue for the city of Pilar !

Pilar starts out like any other city. It has a dock, farmland, a town square, shops and stalls, a church, a library and a cinema. As the Traveller progresses through the hill side city, from the quiet dockside , further into the towns interior, climbing up a vast number of stairs before reaching a steep cliff at a back alley of the darkest depths Pilar has to offer. Leaning against the rock face is a tall, flimsy-looking ladder , he decides to take the chance and sets of up ladder’s steps. The climb is torturously long, the Traveller’s view of the city below is blurred but he continues to progress up the torturous climb to the unknown of what awaits him above. He arrives at the peak of the hill to see the entrance to a lavish cathedral, giant hall empty apart from a spiral staircase, leading up to the buildings peak. Outside the sky is a dark otherworldly blue, a red sun towers over the dream scape of this side of Pilar that only a few outsiders have seen. A secret higher city above the peaceful classic holiday destination situated below. Kites fly from strange looking buildings in all shapes and sizes. A tall dark green pillar shaped building is stationed at the very peak of the mysterious ‘other’ city, at the top of the pillar a large red semi circle emerges with a giant circular hole cut from it. Its circular yellow face with large white painted eyes and orange beak, looks down on the bizarre dreamlike architecture like a bird of prey.!

Speaking to the residents on this part of the city, Pilar Above, is useless. One type with ignore you, much more interested in going to the shrine behind the looming bird shaped tower, to pray to the mysterious Red Sun and the asterisk shaped stars that are always present no matter the time of day. The other type of city folk will be more then willing to talk to a foreigner, however, they do not share a common tongue with them, instead they speak rapidly in their own language, a strange and complex tongue of shapes and colours rather then words and sentences, untranslatable to the rest of the world including the city hundreds of thousands of metres below. Luckily there is one man, who used to be just like the traveller, who still speaks the language of the people below. Wrapped in a black cloak, plain in comparison to the highly decorated ones of the other citizens, with beige eyes and a wide mouth. He tells a tale of the motive of this city, of finding the connection between dreams and the stars and sun. Every day they look through telescopes to the sky above, looking for answers to the secrets that plague their city’s mysterious origins. “They hold the secrets of their city, of Pilar Above” he hisses, before going back to stare at a vaguely feminine shaped building, with a round bust and base, part of a series of similarly shaped buildings surrounding the square of the above city. In the center a bare tree, that can barely be called a tree because of the bare branches that never bore any leaves in all of its century long existence. !

The differences between Pilar Below and Pilar Above are most intriguing, especially how culturally different the two are despite still being part of the same city. Pilar Below being a standard holiday retreat with its green and purple fields, standard angular homes, and tall, slim hotels which welcome any type of tourist and traveller in their midst. The small dock, situated at the very edge of the city’s border, is a haven for small time fisherman who arrive in the evening to deliver their catches to the market stalls and mend their nets in the rich moonlight as they await for the next day of fishing. Every year a parade takes place, celebrating past victories hundreds of years ago with the city’s famous dish of smoked mackerel, drowning it down with beer and wine. !Religion is not as commonplace as it once was in Pilar Below, It’s modern day life style not needing to depend on any God. However, even though the townspeople have stopped believing, the church is stills standing proud, open and willing to take in anyone who is wanting to pray to their forgotten ancient God.!In general, the residents live a relatively mediocre and quiet life style, some work hard on the farms, sun pounding on their backs as the sweat drips down their faces. While others work in the town as shopkeepers, bankers, tour guides and waiters and hove to deal with the demands of a time schedule and rowdy costumers from the richer locals further up the hillside.!

The ladder at the very back of Pilar Below, behind a Bank and a very Expensive pizza restaurant, next to a dried up abandoned well, is the only connection between the city on the ground and the city high up on the hillside. Despite its weak appearance it is permanently stuck to the cliff face, being there for as long as the city has existed for. Upon climbing and reaching the Cathedral that beckons only a certain type of traveller inside its mysterious walls, only to reveal that it is a decoy on the inside, only containing the spiral staircase that leads to Pilar Above. Working as if it is transporting the traveller to a whole new world and not just a hours trip up to the bizarreness of the upper city. At its peak is a shrine gate with a small bell hanging from the connecting beam ringing ominously as it is passed, the sky does not have a set colour, it changes from , red to blue to green to yellow, depending on the unbeknown traveller’s aura. What always remains the same however is the Red Sun and the peculiarly shaped stars, which are visible night and day without fail, while the sun sets to reveal a pale ghostly blue moon in its wake.!

Pilar Above is a very bizarre. Each building is different and unique, all of them have a interesting story of how they were built, and they come in all shapes and sizes: angular, spherical, tall, short, unusual, and ordinary. The residence have adored their houses with incomprehensible symbols that only they can deceiver. They are all related, from birds to astrology to dreams, key factors present in the local religion that every citizen is a part of exclusive to only those who live on the higher plains of Pilar. They all dedicate their lives to know what the abstract sky above them means, and what is up there. They throw themselves into researching in a cultish like fashion, meeting up on Friday evenings at the shrine behind the bird pillar to appease their ruler, the Red Sun. Their true goal is shrouded in mystery due to their language being untranslatable, the only thing known about it however is that they want to see the connection between their dreams and of the odd shaped stars and sun ruling above them and only them. !This dedication to their cause as affected their lifestyle drastically. It is hard to tell two city dwellers apart due to the black cloaks adored in blocks of primary colours, in a similar way as some of the households. They are all in almost perfect unison and in such a way that the city doesn’t feel alive in a natural sense but a mechanical sense like the cogs of toy robots and machines.!Recent studies into the city above have revealed that the city produces a strange hallucinogenic mist that might have a connection with the dream like setting and the reasons for the odd structures. The oddest thing about this phenomenon however is how it only effected the citizens of Pilar Above and of how the city seems to choose which outsider has the privilege of viewing the madness of the upper half of the city for themselves.!

Pilar Thumbnails !

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