This was a great book and it was very interesting. I learned many things about Miro and his styles of painting.

If you're a true Miro' fan, collector or admire his work, this book is a must have. Miro' was a prolific artist and no book represents all of his work. The Cramer book illustrates some of the better Miro works, signature identification and a definitive breakdown of editions. From a collectors viewpoint it's valuable asset. It's also a work of art in itself. Pleasing to review and educational if need be. It may be expensive, but well worth it.

This book is one that shows how Miro and maybye how people felt in that time period,which he lived so long.He made many beutyfull pictures and some that were just nonsense.I like his paintings so much i belive this book and him have inspiered me to be an artist one day.I am not very good but miro did not paint good but it was what he felt and that made him care and that is all that really matters.

This Famous Artist book by Nicholas Ross serves as an introduction to the life and work of Joan Miro, who was much more than a Spanish Surrealist artist. Miro used painting, sculpture, textiles, pottery, theater and enormous public monuments to express his ideas. Unlike other artists, such as Monet and O'Keefe, Miro has not been the subject of a lot of juvenile art books. But Ross does a marvelous job of showing the growth and evolution of Miro as an artist. If you were to flip through this book, you would not think these were all the work of the same artist, which is one of the reasons this is so fascinatiing. Young readers will learn the value of experimenting and understand that there is no "right" way of painting or doing any other type of art. I read this book because I have been doing my own little art appreciation course, and Miro is the one artist who sticks out as a new discovery for me. His most famous painting, "Harlequin's Carnival" (1924-25), which is shown on the cover, gives you but a taste of Miro's conception of art.

These books are organized in a particular way for each two-page spread: On the left page there is an illustration of the artist's home or environment and the story of the artist's life, along with a painting and a small symbol used to indicate the size of the paintings relative to a person. On the right page there are more paintings (usually with a key section enlarged) with text about the artist's work at the time, along with a feature on the artist's technique (e.g., feel and draw, paint in color alone, drawing by chance) with practical projects to try. This is a first-rate exploration of an artist, both for this particular series and in general.

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.

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.

What can I say about Miro's art? I love it. Art is a purely subjective thing. I enjoy the subtle technigues you notice in his art when you look closely. Sitting back and absorbing the art allows all sorts of images to come to mind. Miro has some very lovely backgrounds for his work, using shades of color to add depth and a sense of realism to his work. Some of my favorites are "femme et chat" and "animal composition".

This book contains the prints of lithographs made by Miro' first produced in 1944, at the time of World War II. The illustrations are all black and white - some forms are quite whimsical, others reflect the influence of Picasso and surrealism. Though Miro's works usually contained bold colors, these works are all the more pwerful for the tonal values of black and white.
If you are interested in art, especially of the Surrealist Movement, this is a great place to start.

The book's story is written in a style mimicing Miro's early surrealistic style and would be difficult for many young readers to grasp, many details are left out, the reader must figure them out as they go along. An interesting technique but probably more confusing than appealing to most youngsters. The insets of photos of the artist,his work,places he lived and things which influenced him all with explanations are excellent and highly informative.

At a school sleepover Cecilia is puzzled when her teacher says "you're wrapped in a Miro! You're sure to have sweet dreams." The next morning Cecilia learns a Miro is not a type of sleeping bag, but the name of a famous artist. Claire-Helene Blanquet combines this narrative with information about the life and art of Joan Miro. "Earth and Sky" is illustrated with both reproductions of Miro's paintings and photographs of the artist and the places where he lived and worked. I have the feeling that while Blanquet is obviously responsible for the story of Cecilia and her friends learning about Miro and trying to use his ideas about art in their classroom, that John Goodman is not only responsible for the translation but the sidebars that get into considerably more detail about Miro and his art. So this is really an interesting hodge-podge of a book and as long as you read it in that light I think it will make more sense to you. At the end of the story, Cecilia and her friends finally discover the painting that inspired the design of her sleeping bag was "The Skiing Lesson." Of course, young American readers might not be as familiar with Miro as they would with other Spanish artists, such as Goya, Picasso and Dali. I will have to track down some more volumes from the "Art for Children" series from Chelsea House Publishers to see what they do with Da Vinci, Matisse, Van Gogh, and one of my personal favorites, Rousseau.

I could not make it through the first chapter of this book. I am not an English teacher, but the run-on sentences and atrocious sentence structure drove me crazy! The author tries to provide a political context for the Constellations, both paintings and poetry. However, he jumps from year to year and place to place without transition. I found this extremely confusing and also incomplete. I was also disappointed in the black and white illustrations. I don't think the paintings can be appreciated at all in this book. Don't buy it!