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>> Stephanie Stillo: Hi.
My name is Stephanie Stillo and
I'm a curator in the Rare Books
and Special Collections
Division.
And this is another
segment of From the Vaults.
So today I want to talk
about a very special book
in the Aramont Library which
is Joan Miro's Constellations.
So Constellations
was a collaboration
between the Catalan artist Miro
and surrealist poet
Andre Breton.
And it was produced by Pierre
Matisse who was the son
of Henri Matisse in 1959.
And what makes this book so
incredibly special was --
it was this wonderful
collaboration and sort of call
in response between
the artist and the poet
so people could have greater
access to both of their work.
So what we have here
are [inaudible]
or stencil renderings of Miro's
original Constellation series.
So the Constellation series
was originally composed
in 1940 and '41.
This was a very difficult time
in Miro's life, so he was living
in Normandy when it was
bombed by the Nazis in 1940,
and he was forced to flee to
the Spanish island of Mallorca
to stay with his wife's family.
So it was during this very
turbulent time in Miro's life
that he composed the
original Constellation series.
So Constellations is filled
with Miro's biomorphic figures,
so figures that are
taken from nature
but have abstracted forms.
So here we have "Women Encircled
by the Flight of a Bird"
which is a very poetic title
and which is true for all
of Miro's Constellation series.
They all have very
poetic titles.
So we can see that the
illustration has an almost
dream-like effect.
And this is true for most of
Miro's Constellation series.
So here we have the
central figure of a woman.
We have another one up here.
And then we have these
bird-like figures
that encircle both of them.
And this was really the
point of Miro's series,
to create these dream-like
images that transcended reality
and spoke to larger truths
about his life during the war.
So many of the paintings
in the original Constellation
series deal
with the idea of the night sky.
So here we have "Morning Star"
which has these wonderful
pastels in the background
that give you the sense
of the early dawn.
Here we have "People at Night,
Guided by the Phosphorescent
Track of a Snail".
And here we -- you can see
this darker background,
this night sky, and then we have
these wonderful dots of orange
and white that create
this luminescence
within the painting.
In January of 1945,
the Constellation series was
very quietly brought to New York
and exhibited in the
Pierre Matisse Gallery.
And it was really seen as
this expression of survival,
of artistic creativity
during the storm of war.
The Constellation
series for a lot
of artists was really
a flower in the desert.
And Miro really conceived of
these paintings as something
that was composed in one
of the most difficult
times of his life.
So he writes about it
saying that as an --
this was "an oeuvre realized
during this terrible time
when they wanted to deny
all spiritual values
and to destroy all
that man holds precious
and worthy in life."
After World War II, the
Constellation series was broken
up and a lot of the paintings
went into private hands.
In the 1950s, Miro, Andre Breton
the great surrealist poet,
and Pierre Matisse decided
to bring the Constellations
back together to be able
to make a very high-end
reproduction
to allow greater
access to the series.
And this was no small feat
because the series had been
dispersed throughout Europe
and America.
And in the 1959 release
of the reproductions,
you actually have a list
of all of the people
that contributed
their paintings,
so each one of the 22
paintings are listed,
where they came from,
and who offered them
for the reproductions.
So the Constellation
reproductions allow us
to get a closer look at
Miro's original series.
So here we have "Sunrise"
which is the first
painting in Miro's series.
And we see that it has this
beautiful translucent background
with all these whirling colors,
but the central figures are
minimal and sort of block-like.
Later on in the series we have
a painting called "Poetess".
And you see that it's
much more crowded
than this first initial
painting.
And this is really a theme
within Constellations is
that as you move
through the series,
the paintings become
more and more crowded
and more and more complex.
So one of the wonderful things
about these reproductions is
that they're true to size,
and this is how Miro
wanted them to be.
And the reason why is that
they are incredibly dense
and they look like
large frescos.
They look like large paintings,
but their canvases were
actually quite small.
And this is exactly how
Miro wanted them to look.
So he talks about how "this is
one of the most important things
that I have done, and even
though the formats are small,
they give the impression
of large frescos."
So the 1959 [inaudible]
reproductions
of Miro's Constellations came
with poetry by Andre Breton,
the father of surrealism.
And Breton wanted to respond
to Miro's Constellations.
He was deeply moved
by them after the war
and was very interested
in having a poetic
response to Miro's series.
So here we come back to
"Women Encircled by Birds".
And for Breton, he envisioned
a poem that was very anxious,
that was about being trapped
and encircled and watched.
And it really is true
that Breton's poetry is not an
interpretation of Miro's work
but rather a response
to it in many ways.
These two men were dealing
with feelings of exile,
of trying to be an
artist during the war,
and they both have their own
response that worked together
in the Constellation
release of 1959.
Thank you for joining
us for another segment
of From the Vaults
in the Rare Books
and Special Collections
Division.
I hope that you will join
us again for more treasures
from the Aramont Library
as well as other books
from the Rare Books and
Special Collections Division.
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