Antoni Miró’s art: understanding a utopia

Silvestre Vilaplana

Antoni Miró’s art is an undressed body, one that seduces us, caressed by desire, naked among the colours of the earth, obscene in the delightful pleasure of anonymity. It is the silence of the night around the Sopalmo country house and a music that playfully watches over the labyrinthine rooms of the house; it is a senyera over the walls and inside the soul, it is the blazing red of the peoples pleading for justice, which the powerful decimate and taint with the reds of pain, the rotten golds of the tyranny of the dollar gnawing inside us; the beggars who become the saddest and most honourable statues in front of the majestic buildings that look at them with indifference. It is innovation, the delicate brushstroke, the unfathomable depth of creativity. It is an Alcoi of slopes and bridges, with the murmur of its smell of stone, of thyme, of factories, on every canvas. It is the distant and kaleidoscopic gaze, focused on the viewer of a museum, sometimes attentive, sometimes indolent, vaccinated against the void in the face of so much beauty, thus creating a perfect metaphor for those who wander through life. It is the password of the just who are against war and in favour of freedom, who condemn tortures, who support rights and language, who oppose cuts, who make their points vividly and with dignity. It is the heart telling of the miseries we are all to blame for, it is what the people on the streets long for, body after body, fight after fight. It is the chessboard with the dull colours and the yelling of those who wish to make the streets of Palestine a reality, it is a bird flying over the endless niches of New York’s skyscrapers, the invisible scythe that looms over them with pigments of ill omens. It is a humble village on the outskirts, where the joy for life can still be found. It is a chronicle of the days and worlds not yet explained, it is Sol Picó dancing and lulling the wind, transforming the body into the best paintbrush to awaken the senses. It is an Arab spring of swarthy faces and a Valencian spring of rebellious youths, our heirs; it is a sea of estelades flying in the wind and the pleonasm of a police force without dignity. It is the portrait of the austere faces of those who led and still lead us, those who conveyed to us the poetry, the art, the music and the undeniable value of the word ‘dignity’, those we are proud of because we know we are on their side, always and in spite of everything. It is the artwork that some tried to silence in the streets of Gandia, a veiled story that rebels and mirrors shame, a paper rose, a password, secret like a line of a poem by Estellés. It is the gaze of women, desperate, captive, glimpsed behind a burka that imposes uniformity while becoming diverse in a rainbow of silence and slavery. It is the smile, the unconditional affection of Isabel-Clara Simó. It is an oil lamp that releases the flavours of the world, filtered through a perfectionist paintbrush; it is an undiscovered language in the united galaxy of every series of artworks. It is the vacuum left by the game of love, for the sea to fill it with reflections; the same backdrop that is later silenced by the playful night to preserve the intimacy of lovers. It is the reflection of old wars and the echo of those to come, of the crimes awaiting us if we do not react; it is the chance to understand the utopia and make it true. It is Paris and the long corridors of the Louvre, an echo of Cuba and Che’s proud eye pupils. It is the meticulous diary that conceals the breath of every day, the faint essence of the treasure of life. It is the sculpture at the end of a bridge that always brings both sadness and comfort, because it reminds us of those who are at once absent and present. It is the magic of simple objects turned into legends on the canvas, it is the admiration of masters, the tributes in delightful intertextualities spread over time. It is a bicycle that waits. It is the metallic architecture of expressive soundness, the glass mirroring the falseness of the world, the nostalgia of those clouds that make us imagine that different lives are possible. It is the ruined perfection of the memory of Greece, all that it once was and still resists. It is the irredeemable strength of Sofia, flags of insurrection raised to the skies, defiant, arrogant, encouraged by the hopelessness of peoples, never giving up. It is one of Espriu’s triumphant poems about abysses that deliver us from evil. It is the hint of a movement, the subtlety of a gesture that, in the lips, keeps the vibrant tension of a moment of ardour and passion. It is the image that transcends and scars conscience. It is the palette and the secret doubts of whether it is a pipe or not. It is the feeling of longing, measured on Gades’s naked torso. It is a wordless poem, the whip that awakens what is left of humanity inside us. It is the perfection, the fragility of a body in the face of the world’s barbarity. It is the inseparable strength of the group, the celebration of a statement of principles, a fraternity of raised arms against an enemy that is always the same, regardless of the disguise. It is the meaningful silence rooted deep inside us, disturbing and filling us, accompanying and fascinating us, satisfying and harming us. It is the desperate cry of black America, the sincerity in every brushstroke, like a blood vow; a tribute to the thriving future to be found in the lifeblood of taking pride in one’s history, in one’s syllables. It is the star of a sorrowless north, the steady compass we never lose, the distant light without a shipwreck, in the twilight of renunciation. It is vindication. It is Ovidi’s beating memory and heart, the melancholic hues of dusk advancing through the galleries, kissing and guarding the buildings that preserve creation. It is the plinth supporting a universe that smells of textures and where the terrifying sobs of stars are heard. It is a symbol that rises and one thousand that are destroyed, the iconoclasm of those who know the truth. It is a fantasy rooted in the present that breathes with the discordant voices of the world. It is the bullet shot by a sniper who works nights, without haste, leaving every drop of blood on the canvas. It is the interplay of perspectives and the immeasurable reference of the future, the smiling children in the streets of Marrakech, the faces distorted by fear and tears. It is the illusion of an Ithaca, those sculptures as perennial as convictions; it is a generous fondness, it is the link between yesterday and all the tomorrows to come. Antoni Miró’s art is voice, gaze, provocation, hope, accuracy, courage, commitment, everyday beauty. Antoni Miró’s art is ART.