MIRÓ'S STUDIO: maximum stuff, minimal distraction

Here's a little reminder that decluttering your creativity is not the same as having an empty studio or writing room. As I always say, it's not about the stuff...it's about whether the stuff supports you or constricts you, opens you up or shuts you in.

The stuff in the studio of late Catalan artist Joan Miró definitely did the former. Even though there was definitely a lot of it.

I've given you a link to a photograph of his studio coupled with a lovely little memoir from Robin Lough about filming Miró: Theatre of Dreams. (Sadly the film, which looks wonderful, is affordably available for purchase only in Britain.) Lough and the crew got a rare gift: the opportunity to actually film Miro, then 84, at work there.

I was inspired to look it up by a gift from my friend Donna Morris: a little book called Miró’s Studio, written by the artist's grandson Jean Teodoro Punyet with photographs by Jean-Marie de Moral. Donna has a wonderful eye for art, artifacts, and books, and is also a thoughtful and dedicated declutterer. It's no surprise that the book is delightful and much to the point. Here's what it has to say about the artist and his stuff:

Miro was particularly attracted to old and battered objects that had been abandoned as "of no further use." When walking on the beach or in the hills he would indulge this attraction...In 1978 he explained that 'my present absorption in all these bits and pieces, all these treasures, is quite new. I've been hypnotized. When I go for a walk I don't hunt for objects as if I were looking for mushrooms. There's a sudden force, bang! It's a magnetic force that makes me look down at a certain moment.' His studio gradually filled up with shells, roots, empty cans, bones, pumpkins, pine cones, almonds, snail shells and bat's skeletons, among other things—and not forgetting his collection of traditional and folk art.

And about the artist's studio in Palma, Majorca, created when Miro was sixty-three:

For the artist the space had religious significance. It was a place for meditation, solitude and creation. The only sounds were his breathing and the creaking of his rocking chair when he sat down to think. Miro concentrated very intensely when he was working, lying in wait for the slightest incident, the spark that would lead him towards new perspectives.

So how does a creative person get from a motley collection of empty cans and bat skeletons to the regular and joyous production of art? I suspect the key is in that word "concentration." Though perhaps beginning with the inspiration of an object, Miro was able to move past it into a deeper, more expansive interior space. He might have begun with "stuff," but he didn't end there.

You might say that he was able to declutter his imagination, whenever and wherever he wanted to.