White lights in the trees along Karl Johans gate glowed bright with a tint of blue — thousands of twinkling dots shining and refracting through the thick mist. A heavy freezing fog had flooded Oslo, and though we didn’t know it as we left our hotel in the midwinter darkness, also down the North Sea European coasts overnight.
It was still a shock to find all departures from Norway grounded. We were supposed to travel a couple of hours south to London but no flights would leave that day, 30th December. My wife and I searched for solutions. Our plan had been to spend the last day of the year with my family before boarding a connecting flight home to Singapore on 1st January. It was too late for the family gathering, but we could still catch our flight if we found a different route to London. It’s the only time I have stood at an airline ticket desk and asked to buy seats on any flight to any city. Getting to a larger hub would be the first step toward home. Oslo to Barcelona at 6am the following morning had two seats and could avoid the most hazardous weather. From there we could get back to London in time, so we left Oslo to spend less than 24 hours and New Year’s Eve in Barcelona.
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At school, I kept a book about Joan Miró in my bag on days when I had art class. I had never been to Barcelona and Miró died before I was born. Our worlds did not overlap. There was a brief description of the museum in the back of my book with a black and white photo and I always hoped to visit. His paintings were like a window into another world for me, so appealingly simple, yet amazingly big and expansive. Like seeing faces in clouds, I would study his pieces and see characters hidden everywhere.
Surrealism is not often this welcoming or friendly. Personality spills out of his work with movement and life, combining so pleasingly with the elegance of shape and shadow. Rich vibrant colours as a strong contrast to the plain white wall of a modernist 1950’s villa. Miró encouraged his art to be viewed as ‘free association’ works. Strict sober analysis would be inappropriate by definition as he had given up some level of conscious control himself when making it. Better to let your mind daydream and conjure your own interpretation through feeling. He would simply endeavour to group elements for you to use. His genius was that the more you look the more you see.
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Our plane that had ascended into the thick fog in Oslo now floated down beneath a golden sun sparkling on the calm blue-green Mediterranean. One hour after landing and leaving our bags in the airport hotel room, we were walking around the Joan Miró museum, seeing so many pieces I recognised up close for the first time. Many were either much larger or much smaller than I expected. Near one-hundred-year-old paint applied thickly on the canvas looked fresh and new and vivid in a way it often does but yet you still never quite expect. As I stood close looking at a brushstroke I visually traced the movement that happened in a few seconds so many years ago, the real process of his own hand recorded permanently, right there in front of me.
My wife gave me a beautiful Miró lithograph as a Christmas gift in 2015, one of a series of six pieces. This one is titled ‘Sweden’ 1974, signed in the stone by the artist. It’s one of my favourite possessions. I’m happy to have a little piece of a hero’s hand in my home.
Leaving the Fundació we walked around Barcelona, in crisp fresh weather that London wouldn’t see for a few months yet. Seeing graceful Gaudí buildings, far away hills down long straight avenues, jacketed men from Eastern European and North African countries hustling souvenirs. There was a cold breeze when the sun dipped below blocky rooftops and dry trees.
We saw in the new year in our tiny hotel room only hours before our onward flight, eating grapes in the Spanish tradition. Twelve grapes each, one to be eaten on each of the twelve midnight bell strikes that ring in the New Year. We were confident we could do it, and so gain the associated good luck, until we quickly realised the market seller had given us cups of heavily seeded grapes, impossible to eat even at slow speed. Never mind, we had our good fortune already after being stuck in Oslo the night before. It had been a wonderful, unplanned day.
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