She Miró; She Lloró

Last Sunday I biked over to the National Gallery of Art to see the Miró exhibit. How refreshing it was for me to have time to go soak in art at my own pace. Since the children were off camping, the beautiful art kept me company.

Or was it beautiful art? I'm not a fan of surrealist art. Like so much of poetry, I usually want to strangle the proverbial neck of the artwork and scream, "Why don't you just say what you mean??"

While Miró didn't tell me what he meant, whoever did the write ups for the exhibit shed some light on his meaning. Each room grouped his works into a theme: a place where he lived, a war going on, a scene he repeatedly painted, etc. And in several rooms a recurring theme became evident. A few times he included a ladder to represent his escape.

Like Jacob's ladder, Miró's ladders are grounded on earth but reach to the heavens. For the artist, this escape was artistic expression free of all the political restrictions and turbulence oppressing him. To me, that ladder felt like hope and I cried as I sat there in the East Gallery looking at his art.

Unable to disguise my crying, I tried not care that people were looking at me. I read about his life, the 3 wars he lived through, the exile he was forced to endure, and thought about the peasants who didn't have the money to move away from the misery.

Something struck a chord within me, and to the surface came all the fucked up shit in my life that I try to drown out with distractions. I felt all the pain I try to ignore and longed for his ladder to escape my woes so that I can frolic in my own artistic expression.

Crazy isn't it? I looked at funky art like this and cried.