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Joan Miró’s Joy Is as Infectious as Ever

"Miró and the United States" traces the Spanish master's singular influence on a generation of American artists and reminds us why his work continues to make people smile.

There is a marked difference between a genuinely naïve artist and one that is faux naïve. The genuine naïve is where you start: finding your way, exploring, experimenting, discovering your voice. The faux naïve is crafty, seeking approval under the guise of arrogance and superiority. Joan Miró is the genuine article and remained so his entire life. Like a child, he played, and the canvas and paints were his tools. Louise Bourgeois, who knew him, wrote of his character that he “was what he was and did not pretend or want to be anybody else. He believed in himself, and that is a great compliment. He really accepted himself. In the true naive there is no discrepancy between the person and the work. Miró was his work.”

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This is also an apt description of Miró’s paintings, which exude a childlike wonder. Seeing 50 at the Phillips Collection in “Miró and the United States,” you can’t help but be filled with that same wonder. I heard laughter in the galleries and excited discussion—a sure sign of liveliness. His are not the hushed works of Rothko or the shimmering expanses of a Frankenthaler, also on view in........

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