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Lot Essay
Conceived in 1986, Tête dans la nuit reflects Miró’s lifelong interest in found objects. Already in the late 1920s, the artist began blurring the traditional boundaries of painting and sculpture, creating ‘peinture-objects’—everyday items put together in unexpected juxtapositions and constructions, in part inspired by Surrealism. Miró chose to explore these ideas further through the technique of casting in the later years of his career, producing over three hundred bronzes between 1966 and 1983.
The present work is an amalgam of recognisable objets trouvés that Miró encountered—a tree trunk, an incomplete picture frame, a round plate—nothing was too mundane to be a possible ingredient in his assemblages, which, when combined with clay modelling, could then be cast in bronze.
As French poet and art critic Jacques Dupin wrote: “he was also gathering objects, and wandering off impulsively into areas which opened uncertain paths and rich veins for innumerable new works; work I would call: Assemblage-Sculptures. These works began with Miró slipping out of his studio, unseen, only to return with an impromptu harvest of objects—his bounty—without value or use, but susceptible, in his view, of combinations and surprising metaphors. All of these objects had been abandoned, thrown away or forgotten by nature and man alike, and Miró recognised them as his own. This refuse was the visionary’s secret treasure, his infinitely rich deposit of insignificant objects, still imbued with the smells of the beach, construction site, dump or port where they have been found” (Miró, Paris, 2012, pp. 373-374).
With Miró’s shaping, the everyday objects are transformed into a singular perfectly-balanced form: there is both tension and harmony in the juxtaposition of circular and square geometrical shapes; the negative space of the broken frame complements the solidity of the tree trunk; and there is a gravity-defying illusion of the plate floating in space.
Tête dans la nuit comes from the esteemed collection of Norman and Lyn Lear and is one of an edition of six casts. Only one other cast is privately owned, the others in the collections of the Barcelona City Council, the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence.
The present work is an amalgam of recognisable objets trouvés that Miró encountered—a tree trunk, an incomplete picture frame, a round plate—nothing was too mundane to be a possible ingredient in his assemblages, which, when combined with clay modelling, could then be cast in bronze.
As French poet and art critic Jacques Dupin wrote: “he was also gathering objects, and wandering off impulsively into areas which opened uncertain paths and rich veins for innumerable new works; work I would call: Assemblage-Sculptures. These works began with Miró slipping out of his studio, unseen, only to return with an impromptu harvest of objects—his bounty—without value or use, but susceptible, in his view, of combinations and surprising metaphors. All of these objects had been abandoned, thrown away or forgotten by nature and man alike, and Miró recognised them as his own. This refuse was the visionary’s secret treasure, his infinitely rich deposit of insignificant objects, still imbued with the smells of the beach, construction site, dump or port where they have been found” (Miró, Paris, 2012, pp. 373-374).
With Miró’s shaping, the everyday objects are transformed into a singular perfectly-balanced form: there is both tension and harmony in the juxtaposition of circular and square geometrical shapes; the negative space of the broken frame complements the solidity of the tree trunk; and there is a gravity-defying illusion of the plate floating in space.
Tête dans la nuit comes from the esteemed collection of Norman and Lyn Lear and is one of an edition of six casts. Only one other cast is privately owned, the others in the collections of the Barcelona City Council, the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence.