OCCASIONALLY in the life of a man or a woman there is a moment that changes everything, and from which there is no turning back. In the life of Joan Miro, the Spanish artist who helped transform the use of symbolism and colour in paintings, one such moment came when he was 73, and visiting Japan for the first time. The journey, in 1966, altered his entire understanding of art; what it is, and what it could be. 'There was an immediate change in his work after that visit. In fact, you could say that all of Miro's last years were entirely dominated by the influence of Oriental art,' said Pablo Rico, curator of the exhibition Miro - Spirit of the Orient on show at the Museum of Art this month. Miro had always been interested in Orientalism, even from the first time he came across Japanese and Chinese art forms when he was in Paris in 1920, at the age of 27. 'But it was going to Japan, visiting the temples, talking to the artists and the ordinary people; it suddenly put it in a natural perspective for him, and he found a spirituality and simplicity there,' said Mr Rico, who is the director of the Pilar and Joan Miro Foundation in Mallorca, which owns a substantial proportion of the artist's work. Miro talked to Japanese ceramicists in a small village, and he found himself more moved during visits to Buddhist temples than he had ever been in Europe's grand cathedrals or Romanesque churches, Mr Rico said. During that trip Miro also formed a friendship with Shuzo Takiguchi, a leading Japanese critic and poet who was one of the first Japanese intellectuals to promote surrealist expression in Japan. Takiguchi had written a monograph on Miro's work a quarter of a century before, but this was their first meeting, a very moving moment according to later letters, and it led to their collaboration on several projects. Although Mr Rico never met the artist, who died 12 years ago, his enthusiasm for Miro's work is infectious. Cigarette constantly in hand, to the quiet disapproval of the Hong Kong Museum staff, he rushed around the exhibition - which was in the middle of being set up - during the interview. 'Here is the first piece that Miro did after his return from Japan,' he said, pointing to a huge white-based canvas, dominated by a great energetic splash of black paint, which dripped down in thin lines. I ventured that it looked rather like an angry bull. 'Perhaps,' Mr Rico shrugged. 'Miro did not give any clues.' He pointed behind the canvas; the wooden supports had the date, 4/XI/1966, scribbled in pencil. 'He sometimes wrote a date on the back, but he mostly never wrote any titles to his later pieces,' Mr Rico said. Miro also stopped signing his work after that historic journey to Japan. The artist once said: 'Why should I sign what I breathe? Just so that people can look at it in a museum and say this painting is by Joan Miro?' There are 150 works, including paintings, sculptures and preliminary sketches for paintings, on show at the exhibition, all from this latest period. Perhaps the most striking changes from his earliest work are the lack of bright colours and the use of white space. Miro's earliest work had been semi-realistic, but in his middle years he had developed an individual language of symbols, usually shown as thin black lines on bright primary colours. So a particular wiggly line would represent a bird, which in turn would represent hidden desire. Another line would represent a ladder, which showed both escape and aspiration. Also common in his works were stars, four lines crossing each other through the middle, symbolic both of infinity, and of the essence of light. During the Spanish Civil War, when Miro, a Catalan from Barcelona, was in exile in Paris, the symbols became more angry, more urgent and more human. In the last 17 years of his life, the trademark symbols were still very much in evidence in Miro's work, but they were more calligraphy-inspired, with freer lines, and there was very little colour. 'He mostly used only black and white in his last years, even though earlier his colours had been very bold,' Mr Rico said. He said all the artist's work had been to some extent a search for harmony, in terms of a balance between emptiness and fullness, a Zen-like concept even when he did not know about the Zen tradition. One of the most important groups on show in Hong Kong is a series of small paintings of matadors in the bull ring. Growing up in Spain in the early part of the century, Miro had always been strongly affected by the bullfight. For him it was both a powerful ritual and a symbol of identity. Although untitled, and mainly undated, these works clearly show a sequence of events in the arena. The matador is a small splash of yellow, reminiscent of the shining gold and silver costumes worn by the fighters. For the cape there is a smear of red or a simple curved black line like a scythe or a half-moon. The bull is sometimes clearly represented, with body and legs painted in black; in other paintings the animal is reduced simply to the horns. 'Many people have said Miro is a naive artist, because the form and the symbols of his work are so simple. But it is completely the opposite. Miro is one of the most complex artists of this century,' Mr Rico said. 'He had a very lengthy process of creation. 'None of his work was spontaneous, even though it sometimes appears as if it must have been.' He said that, for Miro, there was always a point of departure, whether it was a photograph, a dream or a poem. He would make many sketches, sometimes up to 30 sketches for a single idea, and then leave them to gather dust in a corner of his studio. 'He would leave them for weeks, sometimes years or even decades, before he picked them up again, and created the final work,' Mr Rico said. 'Matisse once said that when he was creating a portrait, he would make dozens of sketches with the model in front of him. But when he painted the final portrait, there would be no model in the studio. 'He said that he was only ready to paint when the model was inside him. 'For Miro it was the same, he knew the shapes so well that they came from inside him.' The final works are, to an untrained eye, sometimes rather hard to distinguish from the sketches. Some of the final paintings are painted on cardboard, others on newspaper; just a few bold lines on the plain material. 'He was always experimenting with something new,' Mr Rico said. 'Miro could have stopped much earlier. All the museums wanted his work, he could simply have continued doing what he had been doing before, and been successful. 'But he was a great artist, and he kept exploring. He was still looking for new horizons up to the moment he died.' The exhibition has come from Beijing and Shanghai, and when it leaves Hong Kong on October 18 will open in Taipei, Bangkok, Seoul, Moscow and St Petersburg, returning to Mallorca at the end of June next year. Miro - Spirit of the Orient, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Tsim Sha Tsui. Until October 18. Closed Thursdays
