Joan Miró art exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum

    In late April, the newspaper club that I'm a part of, visited the Joan Miró art exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. 

    The exhibition followed his journey to discover his art style, detailing the personal and social events that inspired each era of his art.  However, his greatest inspiration was his mind.  He believed that everyone was capable of unlimited creativity but that society limits us to a set standard of what ‘good art’ is.  He believed that if we learn to let go of these standards we will reach a transcendental level of creativity.

    Joan Miró (1893-1983) is a Spanish artist who depicted abstract art with a surrealist twist. He sought to unlock his full potential of creativity and artistic expression by accessing his unconscious and subconscious mind. To free his mind, Miró explored his art style from a young age; dabbling in realism and landscapes before eventually settling on his iconic art style.  He played with fun colors and simple shapes, letting his inner child go wild.  He painted dreams he had, not in an intricate, aesthetic way, but in the raw state that he saw them in: simple and vibrant with a vague background.  By painting his subconscious, he created a unique kind of beauty that could only be seen by those who paid attention to the simple and mundane things in life.

    As he entered his adult years, there was a period of darkness where his art used minimal or dark colors. During World War II, he painted trapped creatures and creatures in pain, presumably depicting the horror the Nazis were capable of. During the Spanish Civil War when he was exiled, he painted his most famous collection: Constellations. He depicted the night sky that he saw before he slept, vulnerable to the danger outside and isolated. The paintings depicted a sense of freedom and loneliness.

    As he aged, his art became simpler with less details and more empty spaces on the canvas.  After the horrible socioeconomic conditions he was under during his Constellations collection, it was beautiful to see how much freedom and simplicity he achieved in his later years.  

    Miró believed that gaining freedom meant gaining simplicity, and I believe that that was what makes his art so beautiful.   His idea of gaining freedom and simplicity made him an open minded person, giving him the ability to find the beauty in the simple things that go unnoticed.  

    While we are all trained to perform in the way our parents and teachers want, I believe that we need to start creating art for ourselves.  Express yourself in the way you see yourself.  Let your imagination run wild and be free.