For those who only know Miro as a painter of "abstract" or "childlike" pictures, Joan Miro : Selected Writings and Interviews reveals the true radicalism of his thought, a radicalism which, in the realm of visual art, equals that of Lenin in politics. Unlike other works, which ignore his theories about, for example, the "murder of painting," or acknowledge them only to distort their true meaning, here, "the most surrealist of us all" speaks in his own voice, enabling one to track the evolution of his thought from schoolyard days, through the frustration of his time in the army, to the development of ideas about the pen and brush which challenged the very world as it exists. The man who challenged his father by declaring the sky was purple was an intractable enemy of consensus reality. Yet in his ruthless charge towards the future, he did not cease from being a maker of pictures existing in all time and even outside of time. This work's precious insight provides little comfort for those who, as a defense mechanism or out of studied denial, belittle Miro's connection to surrealism, or the importance of his revolutionary role.

This selection of Miro's writing provides an interesting view into the intentions, beliefs, and personality of a very engaging and seminal Catalan artist. The book covers the great majority of his life and thoughts, dealing with his early fondness for Dada, his relationship with painters such as Masson, his exilic time in France, plus musings on Catalan nationalism, the surrealist movement, and poetry.

For those die-hard Paul Auster fans (Auster translates the french writings in this text), this book is a worthy read and insight into an artist who Auster devotes time to translating, and in doing so illuminates sympathies between the two: a nostolgic and essentialist notion of art as process that somehow remains endearing in the contemporary world, and somehow demands the respect and admiration that such force and sincerity manifests.

A fascinating read, both as a historical document, and an artistic biography: it provides an interesting glance into one of the most influencial modern painters of Europe whose life was centered in the intellectual and historical complexities of late modernism.