Dòlar enforcat (The hanged dollar)

The “El Dòlar” series occupies a key place in Miró’s artistic career. In it, the artist broadens the scope of his denouncement of racist repression in the US (formulated in “Amèrica Negra”) and encompasses America’s expansionist policies, which are channelled through the globalisation of neoliberalism. This painting conceptually sums up the works in this series. In fact, even though it shares the political and critical goals running through all of them, the author’s critical position, in this case, is both distinctively and effectively conveyed thanks to the simplicity of the work.

The dollar, which was taken by the artist as a symbol of the neoliberal economic paradigm advocated by the Chicago School, is shown hanging. The suggestion is that the dollar has been hung by the neck after a fair trial. Symbolically, the work seeks to end relentless capitalism because of the injustices and inequalities it spawns. That is why Miró has chosen hanging for the dollar, this being a common form of execution in America throughout the 19th Century and for some time after.

The real protagonist of the composition is the dollar bill, because of everything that it represents. It is only complemented by the rope and a wooden clothes peg which figuratively causes, with its weight, the strangulation. These elements form a cross-like composition over a neutral background simulating crumpled paper that forms two horizontal bands.

The horizontal component consists of a hyper-realistic representation of a used, crumpled dollar bill that occupies most of the central part of the canvas. The vertical one, in contrast, is comprised of the aforementioned rope, from which the banknote hangs and with which it is being strangled by its centre, precisely where the picture of George Washington would be, as if the author intended to hint that 18th — Century incipient neoliberalism was already violating the democratic values upon which the United States’ Constitution was based.

In short, Antoni Miró’s work ironically suggests the fulfilment of a much-needed will: to end up being a metaphorical executioner of the dominant economic system. This is why this work might be regarded as the artist’s most explicit and visceral expression of rejection towards Yankee economic imperialism.

Santiago Pastor Vila