ment by ordering “un peu plus de fourrure” (a little more fur), and
the sculpture had its genesis.Object takes on an anthropomorphic
quality, animated by the quirky combination of the fur with a func-
tional object. Further, the sculpture captures the Surrealist flair for
alchemical, seemingly magical or mystical, transformation. It incor-porates a sensuality and eroticism (seen here in the seductively soft,
tactile fur lining the concave form) that are also components of
much of Surrealist art.JOAN MIRÓ Like the Dadaists, the Surrealists used many meth-
ods to free the creative process from reliance on the kind of conscious
control they believed society had shaped too much. Dalí used his
paranoiac-critical approach to encourage the free play of association
as he worked. Other Surrealists used automatism and various types of
planned “accidents” to provoke reactions closely related to subcon-
scious experience. The Spanish artist Joan Miró(1893–1983) was a
master of this approach. Although Miró resisted formal association
with any movement or group, including the Surrealists, André Breton
identified him as “the most Surrealist of us all.”^35 From the begin-
ning, Miró’s work contained an element of fantasy and hallucination.
After Surrealist poets in Paris introduced him to the use of chance to
create art, the young Spaniard devised a new painting method that
allowed him to create works such as Painting (FIG. 35-52). Miró
began this painting by making a scattered collage composition with
assembled fragments cut from a catalogue for machinery. The shapes
in the collage became motifs the artist freely reshaped to create black
silhouettes—solid or in outline, with dramatic accents of white and
vermilion. They suggest, in the painting, a host of amoebic organisms
or constellations in outer space floating in an immaterial background
space filled with soft reds, blues, and greens.
Miró described his creative process as a back-and-forth switch
between unconscious and conscious image-making: “Rather than set-
ting out to paint something, I begin painting and as I paint the picture
begins to assert itself, or suggest itself under my brush. The form be-
comes a sign for a woman or a
bird as I work.... The first stage
is free, unconscious....The sec-
ond stage is carefully calcu-
lated.”^36 Even the artist could
not always explain the mean-
ings of pictures such as Paint-
ing. They are, in the truest
sense, spontaneous and intu-
itive expressions of the little-
understood, submerged uncon-
scious part of life.35-51Meret Oppenheim,Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure),1936.
Fur-covered cup, 4– 83 diameter; saucer, 9^3 – 8 diameter; spoon, 8long.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Surrealists loved the concrete tangibility of sculpture, which made
their art even more disquieting. Oppenheim’s functional fur-covered
object captures the Surrealist flair for magical transformation.35-52Joan Miró,Painting,- Oil on canvas, 5 8
6 5 . Museum of Modern Art,
New York (Loula D. Lasker
Bequest by exchange).
Miró promoted automatism, the
creation of art without conscious
control. He began this painting
with a scattered collage and
then added forms suggesting
floating amoebic organisms.
Europe, 1920 to 1945 9471 in.
1 ft.