Kam Wan Sze talks on Joan Miró: Dog Barking at the Moon (1926)

• Artist: Joan Miro
  Artist's Lifespan: 1893-1983
  Title: Dog Barking at Moon
  Date: 1926
  Location of Origin: France
  Medium: Oil on canvas
  Original Size: 29 x 36 1/4 in
  Style: Surrealism
  Genre: Animals
  Location: Philadelphia Museum of Art
  The style of this painting is Surrealism
  
  
  Surrealism was the beginning of the artistic trend in France, from Dada, from 1920 to 1930.Surrealist Art usually focused on the performance of the main conflicts, such as life and death, past and future. Therefore, surreal painters will show the distortion of the real world or conflict by using fine and ultra-realistic way to express the real world, or even appear humorous effect.
  
  
  The description of work
  
  
  The artist used the simple brown and black for the background.Colorful dog and moon, and a ladder passing across the skyline and meandering back to the sky. As we can see the lane is smooth and clear ,the ladder breaches realism-oriented original size.It highlight the barking dog’s desire for climbing that ladder to the moon to find it’s dream. This expression means the desire to specific objects which are out of mind. It also adds more sense of humor.
  
  
  The artist affected by surrealism,he put the pieced of colour together,show us the artist’ subconscious.So the objects are not  completely the same as real. Everything is ambiguous, for example the moon seems to have a red nose and the bird seems to have no face.  This painting combines four objects that symbolize different meaning .The dog represents the artist. The dog is barking at the moon. It means the artist wants to complain and express his desire ,but there is no one who responds him. 
  The ladder receding into the sky lends a sense of deep, vacant space to this scene of nocturnal isolation.  The ladder means the painter wants to escape from the reality and to his dream world .  Unfortunately, there isn’t any support of the ladder, it represents the artist‘s desire will not come true.
  
  
  There is the key quote
  
  
  Created shortly after Miró first included words in his art in what he called "painting-poems," its genesis lies in a sketch by the artist showing the moon rejecting a dog's plaintive yelps, saying in Catalan, "You know, I don't give a damn." The import of these words, crossed out in the drawing and then excluded from the painting, nonetheless lingers in the vacant space between the few pictorial elements that compose this stark yet whimsical image of frustrated longing.
  Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), p. 63.
  
  
  Reference
  Impressionism and Modern Art(2007)
  Handbook of the Collections(1995)
  Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000)
  Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
  
  
  Opinion
  
  
  When I first saw this picture, I was attracted by the cartoon style of the bird ,moon, ladder and dog. I was curious about this strange combination. Although the lines and strokes are not obvious, it seems that the painter does not focus on lines and realism. It focuses on content, and expression of  work. At first I misunderstood the painter of this work wanted to express dissatisfaction. But later, I found that he wanted to express despair and frustration. When the dog wants to tell the moon, the moon and bird turn their backs to the dog. It shows us that the moon is not taking the dog seriously. The dog is being rejected. In addition, although the composition of work only includes four objects, it will not  make you feel vague. It is because the four objects are distributed in four sides of paintings. This composition creates a space for the readers’ own imagination.
  
  
  Question
  
  
  There are mainly three objects in the painting, the ladder, the dog and the moon, but the painter didn’t give a story to link  those objects, can you imagine a story between those objects when you look at the painting?