ABSTRACT
During the summer of 1929, Joan Miró completed a series of collages in Montroig. They involved cut pieces of paper stuck onto a paper background, technically very similar to the Cubistpapiers colles of 1912. Louis Aragon at least seemed to think so, finding them "closer to the collages by Picasso ... than anything else" (Aragon 26). Though this statement is correct as far as technique goes, it is more questionable from an aesthetic point of view. This group of collages was described by Sebastia Gasch as "work of damnable bad taste" (Gasch, "L'elogi"). For him, however, this statement was not a pejorative one. On the contrary, from "bad taste" came "intensity." One should probably look to the use that Miro made of cheap materials such as translucent paper and wrapping paper, for example, in order to find the basis for this remark. However, there are other explanations relating to the painter's "bad taste," compared in the article with French "good taste," classified by the critic as "the enemy" for "any true artist." One of these explanations can be found in Miro's interest in products of mass consumption, such as "vulgar postcards" or "lithographs on boxes of raisins or cigars," examples that were, for Gasch, of "the most regrettable bad taste" which nevertheless made a stronger impression than any of "the delicate, winged, ethereal creations by those sublime manufacturers of fine coloristic harmonies."
