What if? Metropolis Artist: Joan Mir!

Joan Mir was a Spanish Surrealist artist who was born on the 20th April 1893 in Barcelona. He
started drawing in school back in 1900, taking private lessons wit Seor Civil. In 1907 he went on
to learn at a business college as well as taking lessons at a fine arts academy in La Lonja,
Picasso had visited the academy back in 1895. His teachers were Modest Urgell and Josep
Pasc.!
Many of his early pieces, from 1912-1920, where still lives and landscapes influenced by his
everyday environment of his parent's summer house in Montroig, while he was recovering from a
typhoid fever after suffering from a nervous breakdown. During this time he also started to
experiment with producing paintings while blindfolded and also with oil paints. He also met Ricart
when he attended Gali's school of Arts. At this time he was painting life drawings of nude subjects
using charcoals and chalks. By 1919, Cubism was beginning to become evident in his works,
such as "Nude in the Mirror" and "Self Portrait" which Picasso purchased for his collection.!
He went to Paris, where he met and got influenced by loads of other artists through the help of Art
Dealer, Josep Dalmau, staying in France from 1920-1929 before marrying his wife, Pilar and
decided to stay in Paris for good. Symbolism was beginning to become present in his work in
1923, such as the sun, stars, black solid circles and a bright use of colours. In 1930 he began to
experiment even further with his style, working in other media, building sculptures. His second Self
Portrait from 1937 shows his change of style, as it became looser but more symbolic and
immersing.!
In 1956 he made his final move, after moving to and through from Paris and Barcelona, to Palma
de Mallorca, where the architect, Sert, built his studio house "Sons Abries". Two years later he
finished the ceramic walls for the UNESCO building in Paris, which was a joint effort between him
and his good friend, Artigas from 1955. From this, he received the Grand Award of the
Guggenheim Foundation in 1959.!

In 1968, a large scale exhibi4on of his work, named "Year of Mir" took place, where Sert
designed, commissioned by the city of Barcelona, and built a museum for the ar4st, featuring 40
pain4ngs by him. From this point on he con4nued to go on trips to America and other places in
Europe to show his works in big exhibi4ons. The year of his 90th birthday, 1983, was celebrated
with exhibi4ons worldwide, however, Mir health was also declining, leading to his death on the
25th of December the same year.
He wasn't just a painter, he designed sets for ballet, painted ceramics, sculptures, engravings,
ceramic panels for buildings. Throughout his career he developed many dierent styles from
simple pain4ngs to cubism, from surrealism to ceramics and sculptures. Many of his works were
based on childhood memories, of Tarrogana, his Father's hometown, which was a rough, wild
city, where it's dream-like seVng helped with the produc4on of many of his works. While some
of his pain4ngs gave o a sort of caveman like feel, through the use of symbolism and colours
he was able to give any pain4ng of his a more poe4c and in-depth feel, even if it was just from
the 4tle he gave it. His Father inuenced him through his work and his workspace, as he cleaned
his brushes and leY his studio clean just like an engineer's workshop. Also, the way he used
colours in his pieces, the mixture of bold colours contras4ng to solid blacks makes the majority
of his pieces stand out. Even in his early days, his use of colours were free owing and bold but
s4ll had a technical reason as to why he placed that colour where he placed it.
"Mir could not paint a spot without it falling in the right place" Mir by Twen4eth- Century
Masters page 46

What if? Metropolis: Travelogue for the city of Pilar!

Pilar starts out like any other city. It has a dock, farmland, a town square,
shops and stalls, a church, a library and a cinema. As the Traveller progresses
through the hill side city, from the quiet dockside , further into the towns
interior, climbing up a vast number of stairs before reaching a steep cliff at a
back alley of the darkest depths Pilar has to offer. Leaning against the rock
face is a tall, flimsy-looking ladder , he decides to take the chance and sets of
up ladders steps. The climb is torturously long, the Travellers view of the city
below is blurred but he continues to progress up the torturous climb to the
unknown of what awaits him above. He arrives at the peak of the hill to see
the entrance to a lavish cathedral, giant hall empty apart from a spiral
staircase, leading up to the buildings peak. Outside the sky is a dark
otherworldly blue, a red sun towers over the dream scape of this side of Pilar
that only a few outsiders have seen. A secret higher city above the peaceful
classic holiday destination situated below. Kites fly from strange looking
buildings in all shapes and sizes. A tall dark green pillar shaped building is
stationed at the very peak of the mysterious other city, at the top of the pillar
a large red semi circle emerges with a giant circular hole cut from it. Its circular
yellow face with large white painted eyes and orange beak, looks down on the
bizarre dreamlike architecture like a bird of prey.!

Speaking to the residents on this part of the city, Pilar Above, is useless. One type
with ignore you, much more interested in going to the shrine behind the looming
bird shaped tower, to pray to the mysterious Red Sun and the asterisk shaped
stars that are always present no matter the time of day. The other type of city
folk will be more then willing to talk to a foreigner, however, they do not share a
common tongue with them, instead they speak rapidly in their own language, a
strange and complex tongue of shapes and colours rather then words and
sentences, untranslatable to the rest of the world including the city hundreds of
thousands of metres below. Luckily there is one man, who used to be just like the
traveller, who still speaks the language of the people below. Wrapped in a black
cloak, plain in comparison to the highly decorated ones of the other citizens, with
beige eyes and a wide mouth. He tells a tale of the motive of this city, of finding
the connection between dreams and the stars and sun. Every day they look
through telescopes to the sky above, looking for answers to the secrets that
plague their citys mysterious origins. They hold the secrets of their city, of Pilar
Above he hisses, before going back to stare at a vaguely feminine shaped
building, with a round bust and base, part of a series of similarly shaped buildings
surrounding the square of the above city. In the center a bare tree, that can barely
be called a tree because of the bare branches that never bore any leaves in all of
its century long existence. !

The differences between Pilar Below and Pilar Above are most intriguing,
especially how culturally different the two are despite still being part of the
same city. Pilar Below being a standard holiday retreat with its green and purple
fields, standard angular homes, and tall, slim hotels which welcome any type of
tourist and traveller in their midst. The small dock, situated at the very edge of
the citys border, is a haven for small time fisherman who arrive in the evening
to deliver their catches to the market stalls and mend their nets in the rich
moonlight as they await for the next day of fishing. Every year a parade takes
place, celebrating past victories hundreds of years ago with the citys famous
dish of smoked mackerel, drowning it down with beer and wine. !
Religion is not as commonplace as it once was in Pilar Below, Its modern day
life style not needing to depend on any God. However, even though the
townspeople have stopped believing, the church is stills standing proud, open
and willing to take in anyone who is wanting to pray to their forgotten ancient
God.!
In general, the residents live a relatively mediocre and quiet life style, some
work hard on the farms, sun pounding on their backs as the sweat drips down
their faces. While others work in the town as shopkeepers, bankers, tour guides
and waiters and hove to deal with the demands of a time schedule and rowdy
costumers from the richer locals further up the hillside.!

The ladder at the very back of Pilar Below, behind a Bank and a very Expensive
pizza restaurant, next to a dried up abandoned well, is the only connection
between the city on the ground and the city high up on the hillside. Despite its
weak appearance it is permanently stuck to the cliff face, being there for as long
as the city has existed for. Upon climbing and reaching the Cathedral that beckons
only a certain type of traveller inside its mysterious walls, only to reveal that it is a
decoy on the inside, only containing the spiral staircase that leads to Pilar Above.
Working as if it is transporting the traveller to a whole new world and not just a
hours trip up to the bizarreness of the upper city. At its peak is a shrine gate with a
small bell hanging from the connecting beam ringing ominously as it is passed, the
sky does not have a set colour, it changes from , red to blue to green to yellow,
depending on the unbeknown travellers aura. What always remains the same
however is the Red Sun and the peculiarly shaped stars, which are visible night
and day without fail, while the sun sets to reveal a pale ghostly blue moon in its
wake.!

Pilar Above is a very bizarre. Each building is different and unique, all of them have a
interesting story of how they were built, and they come in all shapes and sizes: angular,
spherical, tall, short, unusual, and ordinary. The residence have adored their houses with
incomprehensible symbols that only they can deceiver. They are all related, from birds to
astrology to dreams, key factors present in the local religion that every citizen is a part of
exclusive to only those who live on the higher plains of Pilar. They all dedicate their lives
to know what the abstract sky above them means, and what is up there. They throw
themselves into researching in a cultish like fashion, meeting up on Friday evenings at the
shrine behind the bird pillar to appease their ruler, the Red Sun. Their true goal is
shrouded in mystery due to their language being untranslatable, the only thing known
about it however is that they want to see the connection between their dreams and of the
odd shaped stars and sun ruling above them and only them. !
This dedication to their cause as affected their lifestyle drastically. It is hard to tell two city
dwellers apart due to the black cloaks adored in blocks of primary colours, in a similar
way as some of the households. They are all in almost perfect unison and in such a way
that the city doesnt feel alive in a natural sense but a mechanical sense like the cogs of
toy robots and machines.!
Recent studies into the city above have revealed that the city produces a strange
hallucinogenic mist that might have a connection with the dream like setting and the
reasons for the odd structures. The oddest thing about this phenomenon however is how
it only effected the citizens of Pilar Above and of how the city seems to choose which
outsider has the privilege of viewing the madness of the upper half of the city for
themselves.!

Pilar Thumbnails!

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