ABSTRACT
Joan Miro's is one of the great poetic minds of modern times. In his art, "the motive of the creation" is, pre-eminently, the "poetic idea." And the poetic idea that governs Miro's art is distinctly modern. From the mid-twenties until the present day, Miro has used the picture surface as a dreamscape. Miro found a sculptural answer to the problems of the poetic object in the ceramic medium—a medium that allowed him precisely the margin of improvisation and the freedom of pictorial embellishment his ebullient sensibility required. Miro comes to sculpture by way of his painting and that inspired by-product of his painting, the "poetic object." Few artists of any seriousness have been willing to stake their entire oeuvre on a medium so vulnerable to both physical and aesthetic dissolution.
