The Morning Star
The body of the paper is used to clean the brushes, and this is fundamental: “in the bottom of the cloth there is color clear as chalk.” Once painted the first Constellation, the leftovers from it are applied to the following one. The wipe leaves a smear (empastifat), an ordinary daub which makes a new space present. It is a juice, like muck, that leaves a transparent base on which to be built. It ceases to be an unread spot, on the drawn painting, part of points and lines that are not yet eyes, mouths, sexes, spiders, peaks, freckles or aureoles. There are brushstrokes that refuse to construct a letter, but nevertheless they do write, a disastrous effect of the destiny: the family constellation and its furry black holes. The color! The primary colors are to appear, they capture us in what we observe. They are the true origin of the world (origine du monde). He looked in the shaving mirror and saw what no one did: “I can use my face for a coffee grinder!” This is the beginning of art.
When in 1939 Nazi commenced the disaster, the artist fears the death of enjoyment: “The days of art are numbered,” he says. He escaped with Pilar and Dolores to Varengeville-Sur-Mer, from there to Sant Hipòlit de Voltregà, then to Mallorca, and then to Mont-Roig. He was carrying small luggage – a folder with sheets of paper anointed and striped, sketchworks that will become the 23 Constellations of a new universe.
Our canvas – The morning star, signed on March 16, 1940, the Phoney War (Drôle de guerre), was dedicated to Pilar. “For me, the female sex is like planets or shooting stars, it is part of my vocabulary.” The vulva and its hair want to scratch us with their stare. The black suns leave us with nothing. The stellar wires become edges that create shapes made by force: mute beak, sharp tongue, black tooth, semicolon, non-swimming fish, an eye seeking for a mouth. The silent strings have been deprived of joints, and their muteness would fade out in scrolls of smoke.
Until the poet Joan Brossa pronounces the final words: “Bon dia, Joan Miró.”
(Translation: Mila Petkova)