If you want to know what my day has been like then I would refer you to my lunch.
Lunch was in the restaurant of the Fundación “La Caixa” in Barcelona. I had been to an exhibition of the art of Joaquim Mir (of which more anon) and felt that I deserved a meal to match.
The first course was a pasta dish. The pasta was long wide ribbons with crinkled edges flavoured with spinach and a tasty sauce. As I was eating it I thought that pine nuts would be an elegant finishing touch and then, with a movement of my fork I disclosed – pine nuts! And that, my friends, has been the flavour of my day.
The day started with an encouraging series of telephone conversations with friends which continue to build the case against The School That Sacked Me. The forces of Gandalf are massing against the evil of Sauron! Each day a new element falls into place. For the first time for months I feel that something real and positive is happening.
The exhibition of Mir (free, as are all the art exhibitions in “La Caixa” god bless them!) was an extraordinary experience as the eighty or so works cover his entire career and is the most complete exhibition of his works ever mounted.
Mir’s artistic career is traditionally divided up into the five major places in which he settled during his life but, as this exhibition attempts to make clear, the locations do not define his achievement.
For me, the paintings he completed in Mallorca in four short years from 1900 to 1904 before his mysterious fall on the rocks of Sa Calobra are by far the most interesting. As I walked around the exhibition I was trying to identify the elements of his style which struck me. I found it easier to think of artists who suggested themselves as I looked at the paintings. His use of colour is certainly individualistic and not necessarily realistic and shows a clear tendency towards abstraction. This tendency however is always contained in representation and at no point does Mir depart from his love of landscape and its portrayal.
Mir manages to obtain a short of Redon-like pastel effect even when he is using oils. The symbolist use of colour and the molten look of the rocks that he portrays in a painting like ‘Cueva de Mallorca’ give an almost surrealistic look to some of his paintings and the painter he reminds me of is Ernst. In ‘Olivos de Mallorca’ the use of outlining and the particular shade of blue used reminds me of some of the more disturbingly organic threatening objects of Welshman Ceri Richards. This is a very busy canvas and gives an unsettling view of olive trees!
‘La cueva verde’ (1903) is an explosion of colour and shape and looks more like a Sutherland in its portrayal of living rock with almost theatrical lighting. This ‘green cave’ is a very personal vision of landscape.
For me the most successful painting is an extraordinary one from c. 1903 ‘La roca de la cala’ – a rock in a pool – a beautiful portrayal in shimmering colour in a subdued environment. This is the one I would save in the event of fire!
This is an exhibition to revisit! And I am prepared to forgive ‘La Caixa’ for the extravagantly priced catalogue not only because of the quality of reproduction but also because there is an essay in English at the back.
And this afternoon I was able to lie in the sun with my shirt off on the balcony watching the white horses plunge their way towards the shore.
Nice!
Lunch was in the restaurant of the Fundación “La Caixa” in Barcelona. I had been to an exhibition of the art of Joaquim Mir (of which more anon) and felt that I deserved a meal to match.
The first course was a pasta dish. The pasta was long wide ribbons with crinkled edges flavoured with spinach and a tasty sauce. As I was eating it I thought that pine nuts would be an elegant finishing touch and then, with a movement of my fork I disclosed – pine nuts! And that, my friends, has been the flavour of my day.
The day started with an encouraging series of telephone conversations with friends which continue to build the case against The School That Sacked Me. The forces of Gandalf are massing against the evil of Sauron! Each day a new element falls into place. For the first time for months I feel that something real and positive is happening.
The exhibition of Mir (free, as are all the art exhibitions in “La Caixa” god bless them!) was an extraordinary experience as the eighty or so works cover his entire career and is the most complete exhibition of his works ever mounted.
Mir’s artistic career is traditionally divided up into the five major places in which he settled during his life but, as this exhibition attempts to make clear, the locations do not define his achievement.
For me, the paintings he completed in Mallorca in four short years from 1900 to 1904 before his mysterious fall on the rocks of Sa Calobra are by far the most interesting. As I walked around the exhibition I was trying to identify the elements of his style which struck me. I found it easier to think of artists who suggested themselves as I looked at the paintings. His use of colour is certainly individualistic and not necessarily realistic and shows a clear tendency towards abstraction. This tendency however is always contained in representation and at no point does Mir depart from his love of landscape and its portrayal.
Mir manages to obtain a short of Redon-like pastel effect even when he is using oils. The symbolist use of colour and the molten look of the rocks that he portrays in a painting like ‘Cueva de Mallorca’ give an almost surrealistic look to some of his paintings and the painter he reminds me of is Ernst. In ‘Olivos de Mallorca’ the use of outlining and the particular shade of blue used reminds me of some of the more disturbingly organic threatening objects of Welshman Ceri Richards. This is a very busy canvas and gives an unsettling view of olive trees!
‘La cueva verde’ (1903) is an explosion of colour and shape and looks more like a Sutherland in its portrayal of living rock with almost theatrical lighting. This ‘green cave’ is a very personal vision of landscape.
For me the most successful painting is an extraordinary one from c. 1903 ‘La roca de la cala’ – a rock in a pool – a beautiful portrayal in shimmering colour in a subdued environment. This is the one I would save in the event of fire!
This is an exhibition to revisit! And I am prepared to forgive ‘La Caixa’ for the extravagantly priced catalogue not only because of the quality of reproduction but also because there is an essay in English at the back.
And this afternoon I was able to lie in the sun with my shirt off on the balcony watching the white horses plunge their way towards the shore.
Nice!
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