Self-Portrait I

Joan Miró, 1937-1938 · Gallery 523 · Floor 5

He went to Paris for a short trip. That was late 1936. Spain had just gone to war with itself. He wouldn’t return for nearly four years. Miró. Barcelona guy. Known by then for the stars and suns and little creatures he’d been painting. Now he’s stuck in Paris. And he decides to do something, in his words, “absolutely different.” He gets a magnifying mirror. Makes his face look up to three times its size. And starts drawing. October to March. Half a year on just one face. Now look at it. Get close, because it’s barely painted. Mostly pencil, with a little color worked in. A giant ghost of a head. Start with the eyes. Two rings, with rays coming off them. Burning planets. Then the shoulders. A star on each one. And up in the hair, those curls turn into flames. He stared into a mirror for half a year, and a sky came back. This is Self-Portrait I. He considered it one of the most important things he’d ever made. And he had a copy drawn. He leaves that copy behind when he flees France during the war. Years later, back in Spain, he finds it in a box. And paints another self-portrait right over the copy. Thick black strokes. Nothing like the careful pencil underneath. On the back, both dates. 1937–38. And 1960. Two self-portraits. One on top of the other. The one in front of you is the face underneath.

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