Some of My Lives (21 page)
Authors: Rosamond Bernier
Alberto didn't have the slightest interest in worldly social life. In the mid-1960s I was often under pressure from Philippe de Rothschild and his wife, Pauline, owners of the wine château Mouton Rothschild, to bring Giacometti to dinner in Paris. They had started commissioning well-known artists to design the bottle labels for each vintage and were longing to have one designed by Giacometti.
It took a lot of persuasion on my part, but I finally convinced him to come with me to dinner. He was vague about the evening, and on the way in a taxi he asked me several times where we were going.
He sat politely through the dinner but nudged me to leave as soon as we could. On the way back, he agreed that the wines were superb, but he never wanted to go back again. The Rothschilds never got their label.
For years, Giacometti had never crossed the Atlantic, although his early exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York (in 1947 and 1950) attracted great attention. His first reason was that boats were too slow. “You can't draw the horizon for a whole week without going crazy.” His second reason: “Because I don't trust pilots. If I were in an airplane crash, I'd die of rage on the way down.”
However, he did give in in 1965 and boarded the
Queen Elizabeth
with Annette, Pierre Matisse, and his wife, Patricia, for New York, to see his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
Queen Elizabeth
with Annette, Pierre Matisse, and his wife, Patricia, for New York, to see his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
He was delighted with the exhibition and visited it a number of times. He thoroughly enjoyed New York. He bought a plan of the city and after two days could find his way around unaided.
“It's curious that I should be the object of so much attention when I'm only a beginner. For if ever I achieve anything, it's only at present that I am beginning to glimpse what it might be.
“But then maybe it's better to get honors out of the way at the beginning so as to work in peace afterward.”
Alberto died in 1966 and was buried in the Swiss Alps near his parents.
I
n 1954 I was in Paris preparing the first issue of
L'ÅIL
, which was to appear in January 1955. I lived near the Hôtel Pont Royal, and its dusky bar was a convivial meeting place. The venerable publishing house Gallimard was just down the street, and its authors often congregated there. (Camus, Gide, Malraux, Céline, and Proust were all on its distinguished backlist.) Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, chased away from the Café de Flore by unwanted attention, found refuge there.
n 1954 I was in Paris preparing the first issue of
L'ÅIL
, which was to appear in January 1955. I lived near the Hôtel Pont Royal, and its dusky bar was a convivial meeting place. The venerable publishing house Gallimard was just down the street, and its authors often congregated there. (Camus, Gide, Malraux, Céline, and Proust were all on its distinguished backlist.) Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, chased away from the Café de Flore by unwanted attention, found refuge there.
It was in the Pont Royal bar that I met Balthus, the Freudian analyst Jacques Lacan, and many other well-known characters of the times. Most notably, I met Joan Miró, who used to come to Paris to do his graphic work, with the master craftsmen Fernand Mourlot and Roger Lacourière, and he stayed at the Pont Royal. I was planning travel destinations for a future summer issue, and I asked Miró what I should show of his native city, Barcelona.
To my delighted surprise, he answered, “I'll show you. I am going back to Barcelona next week.” He gave me his addressâit was for an old building in the Gothic section, just off the Ramblasâbut not the apartment number. Next week I left for Barcelona with that splendid photographer, Brassaï, to join Miró.
Miró was a celebrated artist in France and America by then, and I presumed he was as well-known in his own country. However, there was no one in the little conical porter's lodge at the entrance on the calle Folgueroles to give me directions. So I went from floor to floor, knocking on doors and asking for “el pintor Miró.” No one had heard of the famous artist who had lived there so many years.
I finally found him, a small, benign figure (like many Catalans,
he was very short), impeccably dressed as usual (he favored bow ties), white hair neatly combed, round blue eyes that seemed to look out at the world in perpetual astonishment. He couldn't wait to show me some of his favorites. High on his list was the work of the visionary architect Antoni GaudÃ, a Catalan hero. Gaudà was a passion of hisâthe embodiment of Catalan genius in all its singularity and invention.
he was very short), impeccably dressed as usual (he favored bow ties), white hair neatly combed, round blue eyes that seemed to look out at the world in perpetual astonishment. He couldn't wait to show me some of his favorites. High on his list was the work of the visionary architect Antoni GaudÃ, a Catalan hero. Gaudà was a passion of hisâthe embodiment of Catalan genius in all its singularity and invention.
He detoured the well-known Sagrada FamÃlia cathedral, expressing disdain for plans to finish it. Gaudà had been knocked down by a streetcar and carried to a charity ward, where he died, unrecognized, without having finished the plans for his cathedral. He always improvised as he went along, so Miró and many others objected to contemporary architects “guessing” the master's intentions. Controversy still rages about this.
We went to the park where Miró played as a boy, the Parque Güell, commissioned by GaudÃ's main patron, Count Güell. What Miró liked best about it was its technical ingeniousness combined with moments of pure improvisation, total fantasy combined with precise calculationâvery much like his own work.
He pointed out that to cover the surface of the winding curved bench, which snaked around the upper terrace, would be very expensive. So Gaudà bought up odd lots of broken ceramic fragmentsâof teapots, plates, bathroom tiles, anythingâand let the workmen invent mosaic patterns as they went along, setting the pieces into the wet concrete.
As I looked closely at the mosaic designs on the bench, I noticed circles and stars that seemed to come right out of a Miró composition. “Yes, those motifs became part of my boyhood. Circles and stars stayed with me all my life,” he told me.
It was July and extremely hot. Poor Brassaï, somewhat portly, had to lug his heavy equipment around unaided, perspiring freely, his person and his camera more accustomed to Paris by night than Barcelona in July. But his alert eye captured the eccentricities and oddities of the Catalan scene in splendid photographs for my magazine.
During a very charged week in Barcelona, Miró led me up and down and all around the town. What he liked best about the famous apartment house the Casa Milà were the great ventilators on the
roof like totemic presences, medieval warriors. “The splendid thing,” he said enthusiastically, “is that these sculpturesâbecause that is what they areâcan't even be seen from the street. Gaudà made them purely for his personal pleasure.”
roof like totemic presences, medieval warriors. “The splendid thing,” he said enthusiastically, “is that these sculpturesâbecause that is what they areâcan't even be seen from the street. Gaudà made them purely for his personal pleasure.”
Holy ground for Miró was the National Museum of Catalan Art with its rich collection of eleventh- and twelfth-century sculptures and frescoes. They were originally scattered among small rural churches in the mountains beyond Barcelona, mostly abandoned and falling into decay. Fortunately, farseeing preservers salvaged them in the 1920s and brought them to safety in the Catalan museum. “This is the art that means the most to me,” Miró said. “I used to come here every Sunday morning as a boy, by myself. This painting was essential to me.”
He pointed out a seraphim from the apocalypse with wings covered with eyes. “I never forgot those eyes,” Miró said. Indeed, eyes appear mysteriously throughout his work where they are least expected: on a tree trunk, in the sky. In some of his
Constellation
series of 1940â41, eyes mingle with the stars.
Constellation
series of 1940â41, eyes mingle with the stars.
I found that the most unexpected incidents might fill him with wonder and stir his imagination as much as the great Gothic monuments he took me to see. Once, as we were walking, he stopped suddenly and looked intently at a broken telegraph wire, lying curved in the hot asphalt of the road. “Look,” he said, “
rien n'est banal ni stupideâle fantastique est partout
[nothing is banal or stupidâthe fantastic is everywhere].” He carried a little notebook and sometimes jotted down a notation, of a graffito on a wall, for instance.
rien n'est banal ni stupideâle fantastique est partout
[nothing is banal or stupidâthe fantastic is everywhere].” He carried a little notebook and sometimes jotted down a notation, of a graffito on a wall, for instance.
Although I speak Spanish, he would only speak to me in French, he so disliked Castilian Spain. “I am a Catalan,” he said firmly. “The rest of Spain is as foreign to me as, say, Holland.” He spoke French with that jubilant Catalan accent that rattles the French language around the tongue like so many smooth boulders being swept along in a torrent.
As he said, nothing was banal when seen in Miró's company. A stop for a midday sherry was at an eccentric bar decorated with stuffed animal heads garlanded with red peppers. A meal at a favorite restaurant, Solé, introduced me to seafood so peculiar in shape he might have invented it and a cheese shaped like a collapsed
woman's breast by Claes Oldenburg. I formed a lifelong partiality for the deep red wine Priorat from Miró's favorite region, Tarragona.
woman's breast by Claes Oldenburg. I formed a lifelong partiality for the deep red wine Priorat from Miró's favorite region, Tarragona.
When I was back in Paris from that historic, for me, Barcelona visit with Miró, I was preparing the article “Miró Shows You Barcelona” and reliving our adventures. A most unexpected treasure arrived: a large gouache dancing with emerald and black incidents on a white background. With it came a note from Miró: “Just cut out the motifs you like, and paste them in the margins of your article.” Naturally, I did nothing of the sort; the gouache is with me today.
For the following quarter of a century I had the good fortune of catching up with Miró a number of times: in France, Spain, and New York. The connection was never lost. Every New Year's Day (the New Year is more important than Christmas in much of Europe) I would telephone him from wherever I happened to be, to wish him “
une bonne année
.” Once I called from Houston.
“Où est tu?”
he asked. “Where are you?” “
Au Texas
,” I answered.
“Au Texas ⦠?”
He made it sound as if I were calling from the moon.
une bonne année
.” Once I called from Houston.
“Où est tu?”
he asked. “Where are you?” “
Au Texas
,” I answered.
“Au Texas ⦠?”
He made it sound as if I were calling from the moon.
He was known to be the most reserved and silent of artists, but he did talk to me, the old friend that I had become. I did not follow him to the remote mountain village Gallifa above Barcelona, where he tackled a completely new métier, making ceramics with an old classmate from Barcelona art school days, Josep Llorens Artigas, a master potter. But he told me about it. This was in the mid-1950s. Miró would hole up for months at a time with only Artigas and his son for company, working on an eighteenth-century kiln. No electricity, no telephone. He loved it.
“It is the unpredictability that excites me,” he told me. “The accidents in the kiln. You paint a piece red, and it comes out chocolate brown. You never know what will happen. And I was so excited by the craggy vinegar-red rocks of Gallifa, they reminded me of Montroig, my family farm, that I went out and painted right on them, for pure pleasure. I was incorporating myself with the elements.” These small-scale experiments led to vast ceramic murals and eventually large-scale sculptures such as the tower for a city plaza in Barcelona, named after him.
When Pierre Matisse mounted an exhibition of Miró's ceramics in his New York gallery, I was very pleased to be asked to write the catalog.
Miró came to New York for the first time in 1947. He was on his way to paint a mural in a Cincinnati hotel, and he stayed in a borrowed studio on 119th Street. His dealer, Pierre Matisse, had arranged the commission. Miró knew Alexander Calder (whom everybody called Sandy) and his wife, Louisa, extremely well. The two men had become close friends when Calder was living in Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s, although neither could speak the other's language.
Miró told me about the little circus Calder had made out of wire figures, and nothing amused him more than making the figures perform for his friends. “Once he came to my family farm in Montroig with his little circus,” Miró remembered, “and he gave a performance for the farmers. Unforgettable! This huge man with the tiny figures and his incredible manual dexterity! It was very hot, and he pulled out a pair of scissors andâ
crac
,
crac
,
crac
âhe cut off the arms and legs of his clothes!” When the Calders went back to the United States, a lively correspondence took place, in a blend of Catalan and French and English.
crac
,
crac
,
crac
âhe cut off the arms and legs of his clothes!” When the Calders went back to the United States, a lively correspondence took place, in a blend of Catalan and French and English.
Calder took over showing Miró New York. High on his list was a visit to a Harlem dance hall. Sandy and Louisa were great dancers. Miró said he couldn't dance at all. “They took me to a big place in Harlemâthe Savoy Ballroomâwonderful music. Sandy told me to be very careful there, to be sure not to offend anyone by not understanding them. Louisa and Sandy danced off, leaving me alone at the table.
“An enormous black woman, superb, came up and asked me to dance. I didn't dare refuse, because I couldn't explain I couldn't understand her. So I tried.” Miró stood up and demonstrated his clasping a figure towering above him.
“I met the composer Edgard Varèse when I was in New York,” he told me. “I knew him very well, a very great musician. He came to Catalonia, to my farm at Montroig. There is a very rough road there, several hundred meters; at that time there were very few cars. The farmers went back to their homes in carts, drawn by mules.
These carts moved very slowly, and the wheels made a noise.” Miró made a long, drawn-out sound of creaking-grinding wheels on the road. “And the hooves of the mules went
pam
,
pam
,
pam
,
pam
. Varèse stopped dead and was in ecstasy. This was very fascinating to me because there are such correspondences between us. The way he took from the outside world, the sounds.”
These carts moved very slowly, and the wheels made a noise.” Miró made a long, drawn-out sound of creaking-grinding wheels on the road. “And the hooves of the mules went
pam
,
pam
,
pam
,
pam
. Varèse stopped dead and was in ecstasy. This was very fascinating to me because there are such correspondences between us. The way he took from the outside world, the sounds.”
There had been other visits to New York, organized by Pierre Matisse, who had been Miró's dealer since 1932. Miró liked to mention that it took until 1978 for him to receive recognition from his native land (being fervently anti-Franco, he had deliberately avoided government approval until the end of the Franco regime). However, thanks to his shrewd dealer, and texts by James Soby and James Johnson Sweeney, he was received warmly in the United States. There were two retrospective exhibitions in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1941 and 1959, and exhibitions elsewhere, and in 1959 President Eisenhower presented Miró with an award at the White House.
Miró spoke no English, so direct contact with American artists was difficult unless they spoke French, as did Robert Motherwell. He was enormously touched when Robert Rauschenberg gave him a party in his studio. There was a glass skylight. Suddenly Rauschenberg picked up a pot of blue paint and flung it at the skylight, turning it blue. “This is for you,” he said to Miró, referring to a famous painting of Miró's in which there is an area of blue and the notation painted by hand (in French) “This is the color of my dreams.” Miró still talked about this with emotion. “He did this for me!”
I asked Miró when he had gone to Paris for the first time. He said, “It was in 1919. I went to a little hotel in the rue Notre Dame des Champs where Catalan intellectuals stayed. The owners were Catalans, they were magnificent. They rented me a room for a purely symbolic price.”
He had planned to go to the Grande Chaumière, an open academy where one could draw from the model. But he told me, “I received such an enormous shock at being in Paris, I was so overwhelmed that I was completely incapable of drawing a line. The hand was as if paralyzedâit was an intellectual paralysis. I was totally unable to work for some time.”
So he gave up. “In the morning I would go to the Louvre, and in the afternoon I would tour the galleries. I hardly spoke French then, but every language was spoken in Montmartreâit was full of foreigners.”
I asked him if it was then that he got to know Picasso. “Oh yes, I saw Picasso right awayâthe day after I arrived. I hadn't met him before, but I knew his mother very well, she was
formidable
. She and my mother were friends.”
formidable
. She and my mother were friends.”
“You never met in Barcelona?” I asked.
“He was twelve years older than I and already famous. I didn't dare approach him. He came to Barcelona with Diaghilev and the Russian ballet company. He was in love with Olga Koklova, one of the dancers. They stayed at a hotel together, but he came home in the morning to visit his mother and to shave.
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