Like water after the desert

It was like finding water after being in the desert for far too long, except that I did not know that I had been in the desert. I did not know how thirsty I was until I got something to drink. And I did not know how much is missed art until it was there in front of me.

I cannot remember when I was last at a museum, but we went to the Es Baluard Museum in Palma today, and suddenly I became completely overwhelmed. Seeing the drawings of Joan Miro - drawings that many maybe would dismiss as worthless scriblings - was such an eye-opener.  It was like suddenly drinking water after being in the desert for too long - except that I did not know that I was thirsty. I came out of there feeling refreshed, with my mind being scrubbed and cleaned, at the same time fulfilled, but also with a need to see more art, to collect pictures, to find out what appeals to me or not, and to find some way to merge the art that I am sometimes doing myself  (but that too often feels not like art but like work and concentration) with other artistic expressions.

Why are Miro's drawings art? I don't know! I really don't know, but I started wondering about it in the museum. I know that Miro is a famous painter, but I have to admit that I had little or no experience with his art. The closes I get in genre is Picasso - whom I love. But I know that Miro is famous, and I was wondering for a second if this knowledge - and the expectation of seeing great art - automatically made my mind interpret these drawings as - and see them as -great art. Would I have seen the same if someone had told me they were made by a young child or a drunkard. I honestly do not know. But there is also something that I OBJECTIVELY admire in the paintings: The assuredness of the lines and shapes, the perfect balance in how the surface is covered with colors and weight.

Many of this strange drawings give me much, much more than a painting that is "perfect" in the sense that every brush stroke is there, finished, or a painting that gives a clear visual representation of an object - like an elk in sunset. They make me wonder what the painter could see or wanted to tell, they make me probe myself to "see" something in the pictures. And that is what art is,I guess, something much more than a representation of the existing, but an interpretation, a de- and re-construction. And art is maybe the constant question of what art is.

I was standing in front of these Miro-drawings and feeling really happy and joyful. They provoked me to try to find out why I liked them, why they made me happy and why they so clearly are art to me. I have been so busy with other things that it has been far too long since I have been standing in front of a picture like that, allowing it to capture me.