Hope of a Condemned Man III 1974

Joan Miró made this painting with sparse, simple strokes of black and white, punctuated by a bright yellow blot – what might be the sun, or a memory. I can imagine him, in the studio, thinking about hope, thinking about the condemned, and wondering what the combination of those ideas might look like as paint. That sweeping black line almost becomes a landscape when it meets the tiny strokes at the bottom, but it’s also just a line, suspended. Maybe Miró was thinking about other artists and their lines, or maybe he was just trying to make something that felt right, adding and subtracting until it landed where it needed to be. The white drips could be mistakes, or maybe they're intentional, a way of letting the painting breathe. These gestures, this paring down, makes me think about other artists who use a similar visual language – the conversation of mark-making, always in process, and never quite finished.