JOAN MIRO: COMMENT AND INTERVIEW
things in a sad light while these forms in my work always take a gay
character.
"I remember two paintings of Urgell in particular, both charac–
terized by long, straight, twilit horizons which cut the pictures in halves:
one a painting of a moon above a cypress tree, another with a crescent
moon low in the sky. Three forms which have become obsessions with
me represent the imprint of Urgell: a red circle, the moon, and a star.
They keep coming back, each time slightly different. But for me it is
always a story of recovering: one does not discover in life. . . .
"Another recurrent form in my work is the ladder. In the first years
it was a plastic form frequently appearing because it was so close to
me-a familiar shape in 'The Farm.' In later years, particularly during
the war, while I was on Majorca, it came to symbolize 'escape': an es–
sentially plastic form at first-it became poetic later. Or plastic, first;
then nostalgic at the time of painting 'The Falm'; finally, symbolic.
"Pasco was the other teacher whose influence I still feel. He was
extremely liberal and encouraged me to take every liberty in my work.
Color was easy for me. But with form I had great difficulty. Pasco
taught me to draw from the sense of touch by giving me objects which
I was not allowed to look at, but which I was afterwards made to draw.
Even today, thirty years after, the effect of this touch-drawing experience
returns in my interest in sculpture: the need to mold with my hands-–
to pick up a ball of wet clay like a child and squeeze it. From this I get
a physical satisfaction that I cannot get from drawing or painting....
"At the time I was painting 'The Farm,' my first year in Paris, I
had Gargallo's studio. Masson was in the studio next door. Masson was
always a great reader and full of ideas. Among his friends were practically
all the young poets of the day. Through Masson I met them. Through
them I heard poetry discussed. The poets Masson introduced me to
interested me more than the painters I had met in Paris. I was carried
away by the new ideas they brought and especially the poetry they dis–
cussed. I gorged myself on it all night long-poetry principally in the
tradition of Jarry's
Surmale.
...
"As a result of this reading I began gradually to work away from
the realism I had practiced up to 'The Farm,' until, in 1925, I was
drawing almost entirely from hallucinations. At the time I was living
on a few dried figs a day. I was too proud to ask my colleagues for help.
Hunger was a great source of these hallucinations. I would sit for long
periods looking at the bare walls of my studio trying to capture these
shapes on paper or burlap.
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