The Potato

Potato is a 1928 abstract artwork by Joan Miro. It now resides within the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

We first see just a flurry of form and colour in this busy piece, which is dominated by a white form which stretches across the vertical in the centre of the composition. This is actually a female figure who stands with her arms wide open. When you realise this, other parts of the scene also then become clear. Firstly, the blue screen behind her represents the sky, with a brown area below being the ground on which she stands. We can also then identify elements of her body which have been morphed and enlarged into cartoon-like shapes as the artist bends reality to produce his own world on canvas. This is why some of Miro's paintings have a dream-like quality, but the shocking manipulation found within Potato is more akin to a nightmare. See her hand, for example, with fingers which are plumper and more pronounced than could possibly be the case in real life.

It may be that the artist is creating a sort of potato woman, merging the vegetable into figurative art. She also stands in front of a red pole of sorts, which is visible between her head and body. Miro then decorates the rest of the scene with all manner of different items, which appear to float around, with most placed in the top part of the composition. Miro used more colours than usual here, which gives a greater variety to the content, with tones of black, white, red, brown and yellow being amongst the most dominant. Many other creatures are climbing and flying across the work, some of which appear to be upon a ladder, which was a symbol used many times by this artist. It is entirely surreal, and particularly difficult to summarise, other than the potato-inspired figurative piece in the centre.

This painting can be found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, which itself houses one of the finest collection of art, anywhere in the world. Some of the other items to look out for, besides Potato by Miro, would be the likes of The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Oxbow by Thomas Cole, Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent and also Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. They themselevs have acquired a good mixture of art from across the histories of Europe and the US, allowing visitors to see visually the path of development which occurred over the period of many centuries. Many will visit for a specific artwork, but then come away with many other artists in their mind who deserve further study and that is one of the exciting elements of learning more about the history of art.