Bleu II

Blue II is a 1961 abstract oil painting by the Spanish modern artist Joan Miró. The painting is the middle part of a three-part display of paintings known as a triptych. The other two paintings in the triptych, appropriately titled Bleu I and Bleu III, are very similar to Bleu II. Bleu II is an enormous painting of 270x355 cm, currently owned by the Musée National d'Art Moderne in the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Background

As an up-and-coming artist in Paris during the 1920s, Miró was influenced heavily by Cubism and Art Nouveau, particularly the works of artists like Picasso. During this time he painted works similar to Bleu I, II and III such as Maternity (1924), Painting (1927), and Catalan Peasant with a Guitar (1924). Many of these works used the same spacious, blue field. Miró held a special significance with this colour; to him this blue was a symbol of a world of cosmic dreams, an unconscious state where his mind flowed clearly and without any sort of order. This blue was the colour of a surreal, ethereal night, a night that embodied the only place where dreams could exist in their rawest state, untouched and uncensored by conscious, rational thought. 

Style and influences

Miró is considered to be a prominent artist of the Surrealist movement, but Miró preferred not to be confined by any single style. Surrealism is defined as works that feature fantastic images and bizarre juxtapositions that represent thoughts or dreams, often characterized by nonsensical or wild combinations of images. As Miró took inspiration from several artistic movements of the early 20th Century, perhaps the best movement to place him in is simply within the rough bounds of “Modern Art.” Modern art is usually defined by art that moves away from the perfected canons of age-old artistic traditions. Itt is often experimental and fresh, imparting old ideas in new, unconventional methods. It includes several smaller movements; prominent ones include symbolism and post-impressionism, which took root in the late 19th Century, expressionism and surrealism, to Dadaism and photorealism that stretched to around the 1970s. Abstract art is characteristic of many modern artistic styles, (like expressionism and cubism) and sums up much of Miró’s creations. Another term often used to characterize Miró’s abstract creations is “biomorphic abstraction,” a style meant to convey the realm of the unconscious, a free, formless motion of dynamic lines and geometric shapes that were constantly changing. Biomorphic Abstraction is a movement that grew up with the Surrealist and Art Nouveau movements of the early 20th Century, first coined by art historian Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in 1936, used to describe organic shapes and powerful, natural, almost spherical movements that were essentially an abstract imitation of biology. The Tate Gallery of Art classifies biomorphic art as works that “refer to, or evoke, living forms.” Other artists of the biomorphic abstract style include Wassily Kandinsky, James Wrinkle, Stanley William Hayter, and Barbara Hepworth. Artists of the Surrealist movement often employed Biomorphic abstraction to add life and meaning to their paintings, moving away from the automatism of Cubism that was fashionable in the 1920s. This energy is apparent in the geometric shapes and lines that inhabit Miró’s paintings, especially in Bleu II; ideas and abstract thoughts are often the subjects of Miró’s paintings, and Miró effectively employed biomorphic abstraction to give these ideas life, the way human subjects traditionally inhabit paintings.

The Painting

Miró completed the Triptych Bleu I,II,III on March 4, 1961, well into his artistic career. By this time he was an established artist with large exhibitions all over the world, and saw this triptych as a summary of his works up to this point. Shifts in style and technique are apparent over the course of his artistic career, ranging from busy landscapes and portraits at the beginning of his career to his famous abstract paintings of nearly empty space and stark, primary colors, the style in which Bleu II was created. Miró’s abstract paintings conveyed his dreams and subconscious, and he often spoke of painting freely without truly being in control; rather, letting the free-flowing thoughts and shifts of his mind move the brush across the canvas, a technique referred to as “psychic automatism”. Bleu II exemplifies his distinct style; the artist uses sparse, uniform brushstrokes all across the canvas, giving the enormous expanse of the painting an even more empty feeling, which is emphasized even further by the distinguishable dreamy blue of the background. Bleu II is probably the painting in Miró’s portfolio that most definitively expresses his obsession with dreamscapes and vacant, infinite space. In 1958, during which he was working on the Bleu I, II, III triptych and similar abstract murals in Paris, he was quoted saying: “The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I’m overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge, empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains—everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me.” (Twentieth Century Artists on Art, 1958). Bleu I and Bleu III are nearly identical to Bleu II with the exact same backgrounds of matching color and simple lines and shapes. To animate the sparseness of Bleu II’s canvas, Miró includes the dynamic red line on the left side of the painting, conveying a sharp shock in the calm blue surface. He also employs the series of bold, defined black dots radiating out from the red line in a horizontal flow to transmit the motion of the line through the whole expanse of the canvas. With these shapes, Miró creates an energetic, powerful piece, a bold work brought to life by the precise (but by intention very free) placement of geometric shapes and bright colors, allowing the viewer a glimpse into the unspoiled subconscious of the artist and truly embodying the unique style for which Miró is well known for today.

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