LOiseau Lunaire Joan Miros Memorial To 4

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L'oiseau lunaire: Joan Miró's Memorial to 45,

rue blomet
Scot t D. Juall
Published online: 31 May 2013.
To cite this article: Scot t D. Juall (2013) L'oiseau lunaire: Joan Miró's Memorial t o 45, rue blomet , Public Art
Dialogue, 3: 1, 6-37, DOI: 10. 1080/ 21502552. 2013. 766863
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Public Art Dialogue, 2013
Vol. 3, No. 1, 6–37, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2013.766863
L’OISEAU LUNAIRE: JOAN MIRÓ’S

MEMORIAL TO 45, RUE BLOMET
Scott D. Juall
On 21 October 1974, Catalan artist Joan Miró’s bronze sculpture L’Oiseau lunaire
Downloaded by [65.184.204.171] at 18:43 27 October 2013
(Lunar Bird), was dedicated in the Square Blomet, a public neighborhood park
located on the rue Blomet near the Montparnasse region of Paris. L’Oiseau lunaire
is of monumental proportions: its dimensions are 9281 £ 8285 £ 59 inches, it
weighs approximately 2000 pounds, and it stands on a marble base 3983 inches
high (Figure 1). The sculpture, whose imposing presence and mesmerizing
biomorphic form draw immediate attention from those entering the square, serves
a distinct purpose. Miró’s sculptural masterpiece is a remarkable example of an
artist-initiated and site-specific public memorial dedicated to the remembrance of
artists creating at 45, rue Blomet in the 1920s, and their central role in the
development of avant-garde literary and visual arts in Paris. The history of
L’Oiseau lunaire, which is deeply intertwined with that of the site on which it
stands, renders the sculpture a truly singular work of commemorative art
displayed in public. As Harriet F. Senie states, the relationship between site and
artwork is of paramount importance in an analysis of public art: “It is arguable that
in public art, the site is the content . . . . All sites have local, if not national, content
established well before they are transformed by public art. Every public space has
an evolving history of multiple uses, visual, social, and political, that directly or
indirectly influence, if not determine, both artistic and audience response.”1
This case study addresses the developing history of the site where L’Oiseau
lunaire stands today—a site that, over the past century, has undergone manifold
changes that have dramatically affected the significance of Miró’s sculpture as a
work of public memorial art; reciprocally, since L’Oiseau lunaire was dedicated
at the Square Blomet, its changing status has played a central role in
transforming the meaning of the space where it is sited. I analyze several crucial
stages of the site’s history in the twentieth century before Miró’s sculpture was
placed there. Initially a dynamic space of artistic creation in the 1920s that
evoked numerous memories stated by artists working at 45, rue Blomet, the site
deteriorated during the following decade when the studios were abandoned and
later demolished by the city, after which the vacant plot of land was developed
q 2013 Taylor & Francis

Figure 1. Joan Miró. L’Oiseau lunaire, Square de L’Oiseau Lunaire, Paris, France. 1966. Bronze.
Photograph courtesy of author.
into a public park in the 1960s. Once L’Oiseau lunaire was inaugurated at the
Square Blomet, a mutually transformative dynamic emerged and both the site
and the sculpture acquired new significations that would influence public and
artistic responses to them for decades to come. This article also discusses Miró’s
sculpture in the wider framework of Parisian public monuments and memorials
in order to identify some of its distinctive characteristics as a work of
commemorative public art. My analysis additionally investigates the roles that
natural elements and human contact with L’Oiseau lunaire have played in
transforming the sculpture—both physically and artistically. During a period in
which the capacity of Miró’s memorial to honor the artists formerly working on
the site weakened, L’Oiseau lunaire also encountered controversy over its
specific siting when municipal authorities considered removing it from the
Square Blomet and placing it in a more central and accessible location in Paris.
I conclude by addressing the dedicated efforts that members of the Association
Blomet Paradiso, a local neighborhood organization, have undertaken in order
to renew and expand the sculpture’s role and meaning as a public memorial,
culminating in the renaming of the park as the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire in
2010.
7
MEMORIES IN THE MAKING: 45, RUE BLOMET IN THE 1920S
When Miró (1893–1983) moved from Barcelona to Paris in early 1921 in order to
take part in the international avant-garde art scene developing there, he sublet the
studio of his friend and compatriot Pablo Emilio Gargallo, a sculptor who left the
French capital each winter to teach at the Technical School of Artistic Crafts of the
Federation of Catalonia. For several months each year between 1921 and 1927,
Miró painted in Gargallo’s small run-down atelier situated next to that of André
Masson in a large courtyard behind a printing supply store at 45, rue Blomet, a
street located in a residential neighborhood in the city’s 15th arrondissement
(Figure 2). Soon after Miró’s arrival, the Blomet studios became a meeting place
for a remarkable group of burgeoning avant-garde artists. In addition to Miró,

Masson and Gargallo, painters Juan Gris, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Elie Lascaux
and Jean Arp and writers Michel Leiris, Robert Desnos, Antonin Artaud, Roland
Tual, Armand Salacrou, Georges Limbour, Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon and
Evan Shipman socialized, shared ideas and collaborated artistically there.
Figure 2. Cadastral map of rue Blomet. Early twentieth century. The locations of Miró’s and
Masson’s studios are indicated.
8
Prominent artistic and literary figures such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton and
Ernest Hemingway, as well as art dealers and gallery owners Paul and Léonce
Rosenberg, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Jacques Viot and Pierre Loeb, who also
intermittently visited 45, rue Blomet during this era, recognized the ingenuity of
the artistic creation at the Blomet studios and played an important role in
promoting the success of many of these artists. The exuberant social and artistic
interactions of those associated with 45, rue Blomet in the 1920s led to the
exploration of some of the most innovative conceptions of modernist art, among
them Surrealism, which developed in Paris during the period in which the artists
thrived in the creative atmosphere at the Blomet ateliers.
The decade of spirited exchange and innovative creation at 45, rue Blomet left
a strong impression on many of those associated with the studios. Numerous
Blomet artists described memories of this important space of artistic and social
interchange, invariably emphasizing the camaraderie and lively collaboration
among this diverse group of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists and playwrights
creating in the midst of poverty and difficult living conditions. They also reiterated
the importance of their years at Blomet and emphatically commented on the great
degree to which the studios there changed their careers—and lives—forever. In
“Memories of rue Blomet,” an account of his life at the Blomet studios, Miró
explained to Jacques Dupin, poet, art critic, Miró’s principal biographer and his
close friend, that “[t]he rue Blomet, it is a decisive place, it is a decisive moment for
me. It was there that I discovered everything that I am, everything that I would
become.”2 In “45, rue Blomet,” Surrealist writer Leiris reminisced about the
diversity of the artistic virtuosities contributing to the collective efforts of those
who interacted at the Blomet studios: “the rue Blomet was not simply the meeting
place where several young intellectuals gathered, each talented in a particular art,
but it represented a sort of club where—beyond all of the individual differences—
reigned a certain artistic spirit.”3 Reflecting on his experiences at these studios,
dramatist Salacrou characterized the Blomet years as a period of great artistic
experimentation, “a rich era where an entire generation was formed, a sort of
central laboratory.”4 A photograph that Salacrou took of Gris, Tual, Leiris and
Masson in the courtyard of 45, rue Blomet in 1923 is testimony to the ludic
predilection of these experimental and innovative artists (Figure 3). Lascaux’s
1925 painting La maison de l’homme plume (The Home of the Pen-Man), which
depicts Masson walking through a courtyard at 45, rue Blomet, also portrays the
former site of creation there. Several other visual artists and writers such as
Masson, Desnos and Hemingway additionally recalled, with compelling details
and captivating anecdotes, memories of their formative years at the Blomet studios
in interviews, articles and books.5
During the 1920s, the artists creating at 45, rue Blomet—unofficially known as
the Groupe de la rue Blomet—thus developed a strong reputation in the
9
Figure 3. Blomet artists and writers in the courtyard of 45, rue Blomet, Paris, France. 1923. Top to
bottom: Juan Gris, Roland Tual, Michel Leiris and André Masson. Photograph by Armand Salacrou,
playwright and Président d’honneur de l’Académie Goncourt. Photograph courtesy of The Collection
Armand Salacrou, Bibliothèque municipale du Havre.
contemporary Parisian artistic milieu that directly identified them with the site of
their creation. The specific relationship between the site and those creating art
there weakened in the early 1930s, when the studios that had played such an
integral role in the life of numerous writers and visual artists gradually
deteriorated and were abandoned as the Blomet artists migrated to other regions
of Paris. Miró reacted to the declining state of the former studios, observing that
when he returned to admire the ateliers at the beginning of that decade, he was
saddened to witness that the City of Paris was in the process of demolishing what
remained of them.6 Then in 1934, Desnos, who had lived in Masson’s vacated
studio between 1926 and 1930, commented on the complete dissolution of all
physical traces of the ateliers. Describing the Blomet studios as “a Parisian
phenomenon,” Desnos remarked: “if we left something there, that something has
completely dissolved in time and in the rain and mud.”7
10
L’OISEAU LUNAIRE: CREATION OF A SCULPTURE AND
CONCEPTION OF A MEMORIAL
After the disappearance of all physical traces of the Blomet studios in the 1930s,
much of the property where the ateliers had been located remained vacant for
nearly 40 years, when a significant new stage in the changing uses of the site
occurred. Between 1960 and 1967, the City of Paris developed the land between 43
and 53, rue Blomet and created the Square Blomet, a “garden for children”
measuring 13,780 square yards, which opened to the public in 1969 (Figure 4).8
The square, which took on a new role as a space of social interaction, was named
merely for the street on which it was located and it displayed no information about
the artists formerly living and working at 45, rue Blomet. Other than a few
inhabitants who might have been familiar with the Parisian artistic scene in the
early twentieth century, local citizens frequenting the park were most likely entirely
unaware of the site’s relationship to the Blomet artists—a predicament that
threatened to erase the history of the those creating art at that site in the 1920s.
In the late 1960s, the French Ministry of Culture proposed the idea of erecting
one of Miró’s sculptures in a public location in Paris in order to honor the artist,
but without specifying which work would be acquired or where it might be placed.9
A document dated 23 December 1969 –42 years after Miró left rue Blomet and only
a few months after the Square Blomet opened to the public—indicates that Miró
Figure 4. Cadastral map of rue Blomet. 2008. The location of L’Oiseau lunaire is indicated.
11
offered the second of three artist’s proofs of L’Oiseau lunaire, with the artist’s
signature and “E.A. [Épreuve d’Artiste] II/III” (“E.A. [Artist’s Proof] II/III”)
inscribed at the base of the right leg, to the city’s Direction of Cultural Affairs.10 In
this document, the Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs states that Miró bequeathed
this cast of L’Oiseau lunaire to the city provided that it be placed at the site of the
former Blomet studios: “Miró, whose sculpture L’Oiseau lunaire was exhibited at
the [Pau] Floralies, has decided to donate it to the City of Paris. The stated condition
is that it be placed near the rue Blomet, where he formerly had his studio, as did a
number of other artists—painters and sculptors—whose gatherings created a very
lively artistic center . . . that was, in all truth, the veritable center of Surrealism.”11
Miró, who had not forgotten his life-changing experiences in the 1920s, therefore
requested that this copy of L’Oiseau lunaire be erected at the Square Blomet in
order to commemorate the artistic interactions and exchanges among the

numerous Blomet artists precisely at the site where they formerly worked.
Miró had already sculpted three small versions of L’Oiseau lunaire, each in a
different material—olive wood, bronze and polished granite—between 1945 and
1947, when he “emerged spectacularly and unequivocally” as a sculptor.12 In the mid-
1960s, when Miró produced a great number of monumental bronze sculptures, he
created the larger version of L’Oiseau lunaire at a time when, Dupin states,
“sculpture became an intrinsic adventure, an important means of expression that
competed with the canvas and sheet of paper—the domains and artistic spaces
proper to Miró—without ever being a mere derivative of or deviation from
painting.”13 The Galerie Maeght in Paris, Miró’s loyal sponsor and primary exhibitor
of his art beginning in 1948, funded the production of nine signed copies of the
monumental bronze edition of L’Oiseau lunaire discussed here, which were sand cast
by Susse Fondeur in Arcueil, just outside of Paris, in 1966. The Pierre Matisse Gallery
in New York City and the Galerie Maeght and Galerie Lelong in Paris received the five
commercial casts; three artist’s proofs and a nominative cast were also produced.14
Miró therefore did not initially create L’Oiseau lunaire with the intention that
it serve as a work of commemorative public art or because it had any particular
association with the former Blomet studios. By placing a copy of L’Oiseau lunaire
at the Square Blomet, the highly celebrated sculpture, formerly a private work of
art, acquired a new significance as a public memorial dedicated to the Blomet
artists, as it aimed to reinstate the former meaning of the site by resuscitating the
history of those who worked there several decades earlier. This metamorphosis
reveals some compelling dimensions of the capacity of the square to transform the
meaning of L’Oiseau lunaire and, reciprocally, the power of Miró’s sculpture to
renew the site’s significance when it was placed there.
After Parisian administrators completed official paperwork to acquire
L’Oiseau lunaire and devised the project for placing it in the Square Blomet—a
process that required some four years—L’Oiseau lunaire was dedicated at the
12
Square Blomet during what Dupin recalls as “an almost confidential ceremony”
that was “very modest, without any publicity,” and which was attended by only
Miró, some of his close friends (including Dupin, Joan Gardy Artigas and Alain
Planès) and a representative of the City of Paris.15 Although the event rendered
official the changed status of both the sculpture and the site—and their newly
established symbiotic relationship—the inaugural ceremony did not elicit a strong
response among the broader public and, for the time being, no commemorative
plaque was placed there.
MONUMENTS, MEMORIALS AND THE SITING OF PUBLIC ART IN

PARIS
A brief overview of the changing objectives of monuments and memorials in

Paris—and sites where they have conventionally been placed—provides a
background for identifying additional characteristics that L’Oiseau lunaire
possesses as a distinctive memorial standing in the French capital.16 In The
Statues of Paris June Hargrove traces the history of Parisian public monuments
from the Bourbon monarchy of the late sixteenth century through most of the
twentieth century, noting that Paris has long been an artistic capital whose
monumental tradition is “steeped in subject and style.”17 Initially dedicated solely
to a commemoration of the nobility during the Renaissance and created primarily
in bronze, public sculptural homage in the French capital played a fundamental
role in establishing a city that, Noëlle Chabert observes, “is definitively plotted out
by a regal distribution of space.”18 Since it was essential that a noble presence
dominate the urban spaces of Paris during these periods, monuments and
memorials honoring important historical figures were generally placed in
prominent locations in regions of the city frequented by royalty and wealthy
Parisians. Hargrove maintains that public memorials took on a new status after the
French Revolution, when sculptures “were not only commemorative, they
increasingly became ideological signposts.”19 She adds that following the fall of the
Second Empire and with the mandate of the Third Republic in 1870, when the
modern French nation was taking shape and France promoted a “republican”
ideology, “the French struggled with issues that shaped their state. Public homage
became a statement of national identity.”20 During this period, public monuments
were placed in highly visible locations in the central districts of Paris that
encouraged a broader public awareness of the ideological relationship between the
work of art and national interests of the French republic.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public memorials in
France increasingly commemorated war victories and other decisive historical
events, heroes and their exemplary acts, war veterans and victims of battles and
13
protests. While one might argue that all public art possesses ideological
dimensions, overtly political strategies of public memorials in Paris declined in
the twentieth century, when those honored in public sculpture were broadened to
include scientists, philosophers and other men and women of genius and, more
recently, to those making significant contributions to culture. Hargrove states that
in the early twentieth-century, when “the social topography of Paris dictated the
demography of monuments,”21 monumental art in Paris was increasingly sited in
locations that corresponded more directly to the defining characteristics of
Parisians in specific regions of the city and the civic ethos distinguishing them. In
the last century, artists also transformed their memorials from literal or realistic
portrayals of their subjects to increasingly abstract or conceptual forms of
representation. Claire Blanchon maintains that as the twentieth century
progressed, in the domain of French public sculpture, “we witness a

desacralization of sculpture/statuary with the adoption of iconoclastic subjects.”22
Peter Read asserts moreover that in their unorthodox public sculptural memorials,
avant-garde artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi and Pablo
Picasso, who worked in Paris during the first half of the twentieth century,
“liberated monumental sculpture from the oppressive grasp of the great Rodin.”23
In his analysis of the relationship between Parisian monuments, public space and
memory, Thierry Dufrêne emphasizes the significant resurgence of public memorial
art in France during the late 1960s and 1970s, which he attributes in part to the success
of public art abroad during that period—particularly in the United States.24 Helen
Beale maintains moreover that French conceptions of the roles of public artworks and
uses of urban space developed during these decades by aiming to appeal to a local
audience: in this period sculptures were generally sited in locations that would
enhance a sense of community. Beale contends that “[n]ew ideas began to emerge in
the 1970s, with changing aesthetic conventions of place and space, and growing public
awareness of local as well as national ‘patrimoine,’” with the result that “the older,
ideologically driven definitions of public space, and the statuary which occupied it,
gave way to less explicitly ‘republican’ but perhaps more accessibly civic concepts.”25
MIRÓ’S SINGULAR MEMORIAL
The years surrounding Miró’s creation of L’Oiseau lunaire in 1966 and the
sculpture’s placement in the Square Blomet in 1974 reflect these recent
transformations in French public art which, in the past half century, according
to Beale, “has ceased to be primarily didactic, ideological, or exemplary.”26 Rather
than commemorate solely a single significant historical event, an honorable hero
or a meritorious act—circumstances that commonly evoke what Erika Doss
identifies as “a ‘unitary’ mass ethos” characteristic of traditional monuments,27 the
14
copy of L’Oiseau lunaire that Miró chose to site at the Square Blomet was intended
to memorialize the activities of a frequently changing combination of writers,
plastic artists and art dealers who convened at 45, rue Blomet for nearly a decade.
Owing to its unconventional shape and inventive aesthetic, L’Oiseau lunaire
received a sensational reception soon after it was first exhibited, when critics,
exhibitors, art dealers and collectors unanimously praised the sculpture and
deemed it a masterpiece.28 Dupin maintains that Miró himself considered
L’Oiseau lunaire “the greatest, most important, and most celebrated sculpture in
his opinion. This was a sentiment shared by those close to him and by the
contemporary artistic milieu.”29 With its playfully distorted form, Miró’s work
combines a variety of physical attributes pertaining to diverse creatures. The
sculpture’s polymorphous shape and imaginative anatomical characteristics
reflect some of the avant-garde conceptions of artistic creation with which Miró
and his Surrealist cohorts experimented during the years that they worked at 45,
rue Blomet. In the ambiguous, paradoxical figure that encourages multiple
interpretations, Miró explores the ambivalence of being and perception and the
articulation of reality and imagination; the sculpture additionally evokes
spontaneous creative impulses drawn from the subconscious. While Miró did
not initially create L’Oiseau lunaire to represent the Blomet artists, because of the
new meaning that the sculpture acquired once it was placed at the Square Blomet,
one might argue that the sculpture’s distinctive contours and idiosyncratic
protrusions now recall the diversity of artists and the multiform contributions that
they made to the artistic creation at the Blomet studios. The ludic qualities that
have been attributed to so much of Miró’s art—as that of other Surrealists—clearly
pertain to L’Oiseau lunaire, a work that Dore Ashton describes as “a perfect
example of homo ludens; an ingenious spirit for whom the element of play is
indispensible.”30 The sculpture’s playful character certainly figured in the artist’s
aims of choosing to place his work of art not only where the Blomet studios were
once located, but also in a public park with a children’s playground, the epitome of
what Beale identifies as a “ludic, abstract space” where modern public art has
increasingly been displayed in France over the past several decades.31
Miró’s choice of sculpting a variety of playful figures in bronze during the
period in which he created L’Oiseau lunaire has elicited some provocative
observations advanced by art critics related to an ostensible paradox that the
sculptor’s works evoke. Blanchon refers to the “sacralizing and fixed aspects” of
bronze, a metal conventionally used to construct commemorative sculpture, which
seem to suggest the opposite of the imaginative figures that constitute Miró’s ludic
world.32 She explains, however, that rather than focusing on the rigid and
unyielding qualities of bronze, Miró was drawn to the dynamic aspects of creating
in the metal, such as the “alchemical transformation of the material by fire” and
the metamorphosing process of applying patinas to the surface of bronze
15
sculpture.33 Dupin, also considering Miró’s choice of bronze during his period of
monumental sculpture, a medium “so imbued with the spirit of academism,
official tributes and memorials,” appreciates the “emergence of Miró’s ingenuous
or grotesque figures from the very material that has arrested and frozen so many
great men and solemn monuments in time.”34 With the transformation of the
Blomet copy of L’Oiseau lunaire into a public memorial, Miró demonstrates that
his unique abstract style is perfectly compatible with one of the principal materials
used for traditional commemorative sculpture.
DEGRADATION OF A MEMORIAL
During the years immediately following the placement of L’Oiseau lunaire at the
Square Blomet, Miró realized his potential for displaying his artworks outdoors
and he asserted new aims of rendering his sculptures accessible to the general
public. In an interview in 1975, the year after the Blomet L’Oiseau lunaire was
dedicated, Miró stated that at that moment in his career he had chosen to pursue
forms of art such as sculpture, posters and lithographs that were more detached
from a market value than painting and, by extension, would be available to a wider
audience.35 Dupin emphasizes the artist’s interest in placing his work in public in
order to reach a broader viewership, stating: “[h]e dreamt of the street, public
squares, gardens and cities. Just as he had always sought to transgress painting, he
now sought to transgress his own work, to cross over the boundaries of walled
galleries and museums. He wanted to address his work to anonymous crowds, to
the unknown viewer.”36 As a public neighborhood park that welcomes hundreds of
visitors daily, the square on rue Blomet, which invites free and direct access to
L’Oiseau lunaire, is perfectly suited to this objective.
The City of Paris, which has been responsible for the sculpture’s maintenance
and repairs since it was placed in the square, has undertaken great efforts to conserve
its public art and over the past 38 years, the Direction of Cultural Affairs has spent
tens of thousands of dollars on upkeep and restoration of L’Oiseau lunaire. These
expenses are quite costly considering that the sculpture, as almost all public
artworks, generates no revenue for the city. On the one hand, such expenditures
demonstrate that the City of Paris is determined to keep its cultural patrimony alive.
Yet on the other hand, they reflect the financial strains encountered by those who
support public art, especially since for the past several years the city has been unable
to allocate adequate funding for consistent maintenance and restoration of the public
monuments and memorials that it manages.
The placement of L’Oiseau lunaire in a public park evokes some of the
problematic dimensions of maintaining art exhibited in the open air, where it is
constantly exposed to natural elements. While bronze is a highly durable metal,
16
artworks created in the material and exhibited outdoors require regular
maintenance; however, because Miró’s sculpture has been maintained only
intermittently over the past several decades, it has accumulated fairly significant
damage to its surface. Industrial pollutants and moisture have accelerated the
corrosion of L’Oiseau lunaire, leaving several areas with mottled and streaked
green surfaces where oxidation has occurred; additional environmental factors
such as encrusted bird droppings and other dirt and grime have contributed to the
disintegration of the sculpture’s patina. The corroding bronze has also somewhat
obscured Miró’s signature inscribed at the base of the sculpture’s right leg.
In addition to environmental factors that contribute to the degradation of the
sculpture, L’Oiseau lunaire is exposed to what the City of Paris has identified as
another significant source of damage—humans. As Beale observes, in the past
several decades, sculptures standing in public have “gradually come down off their
pedestals and are much closer to ground level, and to the spectator.”37 As a result,
the immediate audience’s direct access to Miró’s memorial, which is within reach
of all but the smallest children, has had some negative consequences. Since park-
goers have long been in physical contact with the work of art, which youths find an
especially attractive feature of the park, the patina and some of the bronze itself are
significantly worn away where young people have climbed onto the sculpture-
turned-jungle gym; scratches on the surface of L’Oiseau lunaire have also
accelerated the erosion of the surface. Most recently in 2009 graffiti artists
vandalized the sculpture by tagging it with autographs that were effectively more
visible than Miró’s own corroded signature.
RECREATION AND RE-CREATION OF MIRÓ’S SCULPTURAL

MEMORIAL
While the gradual physical degradation of L’Oiseau lunaire might be considered

an obstacle to Miró’s objective of memorializing the Blomet artists, it also evokes a
thought-provoking concept related to the manner in which such deterioration
contributes to the sculpture’s role as a monument dedicated to the memory of
those creating at 45, rue Blomet. Although Miró clearly intended to commemorate
those who convened at the studios and their artistic creation there, it is unlikely
that he would have wanted the Blomet copy of L’Oiseau lunaire to be preserved in
its original pristine state. In 1957, Miró’s close friend Picasso stated that his own
bronze sculpture L’Homme au mouton, gifted to the French city Vallauris as public
art, was intended to be “set up outdoors in a square where the children could climb
over it and the dogs water it unhindered.”38 Five years later, Miró echoed Picasso’s
remarks by expressing a strong interest in allowing his sculptures to be exposed to
external influences, stating that “[a]ll good sculpture should look good in the open
17
air. I leave my sculptures outside. The sun, the wind, the rain, even dust improves
them.”39 Antoine Amarger, long-time supervisor of the maintenance of L’Oiseau
lunaire who called into question the need for routine upkeep of the sculpture, seems
to have concurred with this viewpoint. He observed that despite “the cyclical invasion
of the Square Blomet by hordes of little acrobats, . . . the repeated manipulations by
the children’s hands and gradual wearing away of the surface tend to be perfectly
suited to the sculpture,”40 and he added that “a progressive erosion [that] occurs in
places rubbed by shoes (and sand or crushed rocks in the Square) by these same little
kids . . . probably contributes to the charm of public statuary.”41
From this perspective, the playful recreational spaces of today’s square are
remarkably analogous to both the past creative activities of the Blomet artists in
the 1920s and Miró’s act of sculpting L’Oiseau lunaire in the mid-1960s. As French
philosopher of art Alain states of the relationship between bodily actions and
artistic creation: “we must note that our movements ceaselessly draw genuinely,
sculpt genuinely, construct genuinely. . . . Touching is in itself sculpting.”42 These
children’s tactile encounters with the sculpture thus allow them to mimic Miró’s
creative process and contribute to a perpetually re-created work of art precisely
where the Blomet artists gathered some 90 years ago. Moreover, Parisian youths
playing in the park participate in some of the defining characteristics of Surrealist
creation—the use of spontaneity and automatic impulses to dream up alternate
versions of reality, the blurring of the distinction between real and imaginary, and
the interplay of conscious and subconscious actions (Figure 5). While they may not
be aware of the specific historical and cultural references of L’Oiseau lunaire or its
site, children interacting with the sculpture are subject to what Jennifer Geigel
Mikulay describes as “the power of a work of art to speak to the uninitiated without
mediation.”43 These children’s unwitting participation in creative processes
inspired by L’Oiseau lunaire thus constitutes perhaps one of the greatest tributes
to the memory of the Blomet artists.
Despite their creative engagements with the sculpture, children have also
played an unintended role in what recently became a truly pernicious threat to
L’Oiseau lunaire. Citing the potential danger that the sculpture presents to those
who climb onto it—and as the result of two accidents incurred by children in
2006—residents of the neighborhood unsuccessfully petitioned the City of Paris to
remove the sculpture from the park,44 an instance of what Harriet F. Senie calls the
“‘blame the victim’ phenomenon” in public art.45 Apparently a small plastic plaque
attached to the left side of the marble base politely requesting that people not
climb on the sculpture has not prevented such activities. Since the plaque, which
reads “L’Oiseau lunaire, Joan Miró. Out of respect for this work of art and for your
security, we request that you not climb on it,”46 focuses more on safety than the
work’s status as a masterpiece of public commemorative art, it has certainly not
enabled most of those who view the sculpture to recognize its significance
18
Figure 5. Children playing on L’Oiseau lunaire. Photograph courtesy of author.
(Figure 6). Despite the rich history of the Blomet artists and Miró’s sculpture that
was placed at the Square Blomet in order to memorialize their past, interviews that
I conducted with 30 residents of the Blomet neighborhood on two days in 2006
revealed that only three recognized the importance of the chef-d’oeuvre and the
famous artist who created it. The remaining 27 were not even aware that L’Oiseau
lunaire is a work of art. As Beale maintains, such an unawareness is a common
problem of artworks intended to serve as sites of memory “whose importance is
often belied by their everyday familiarity: the passer-by is not constantly conscious
of their historical associations.”47 She adds that much public art, especially more
modernist forms of art exhibited in the public arena, “can indeed present a real
challenge to a general public more comfortable with the classical . . . and who have
been slow to espouse more enigmatic styles.”48 This is contrary to the standpoint
of the contemporary fine arts milieu, which has recognized and celebrated
the sculpture’s unique significance: in the past 25 years the Blomet copy of
L’Oiseau lunaire gained enough notoriety to be temporarily removed from the
square and displayed at outdoor exhibitions held elsewhere in France on three
occasions.49
While children may have tapped into some of the less tangible artistic
dimensions of L’Oiseau lunaire in their instinctive mimicry of the creative
process, adult residents have generally seen the sculpture as simply a large piece
of playground equipment standing in an ordinary neighborhood square. Such a
predicament evokes urban ethnographer Michel de Certeau’s distinction between
19
Figure 6. Small plastic plaque on the marble base of L’Oiseau lunaire. Photograph courtesy of
author.
a lieu (place) and an espace (space).50 It appears that since its inauguration as a
commemorative monument in the Square Blomet, this copy of L’Oiseau lunaire
gradually lost its ability to memorialize the Blomet artists: the site where it was
standing had thus become simply a place—that is to say, a mundane park without
a particularly important significance. This situation is in direct opposition to one
of Miró’s primary goals of siting L’Oiseau lunaire in the Square Blomet, a
dynamic, multifaceted space in which the sculpture would activate memories,
stories and histories that would evoke, recall and memorialize the artistic
activities of the Blomet artists on the very site where they took place several
decades earlier.
ASSOCIATION BLOMET PARADISO: CELEBRATING COMMUNITY

THROUGH PUBLIC ART
The cultural and historical significance of L’Oiseau lunaire has recently taken on a
surge of renewed interest in the Blomet neighborhood—a situation that evokes the
significant relationship between works of public art and the role that the local
community plays in supporting and promoting such an essential element of
contemporary urban culture. The Association Blomet Paradiso, a local
neighborhood council created in 2003, was determined to renew the capacity of
20
both L’Oiseau lunaire and the space that it occupies to signify the important role
that Miró and his cohorts played in the development of modern art while working
at 45, rue Blomet. The organization’s members, who are made up of scholars,
professional and amateur artists, art historians and other supporters of art and
culture, are highly active in preserving and celebrating the rich artistic heritage of
the neighborhood. Each summer for the past several years, the Association has
organized the “Fête du quartier Blomet” (“Blomet Neighborhood Festival”), an
annual public celebration that brings together hundreds of local residents and
creates a heightened sense of community among them. Those attending the
celebration honor various aspects of Blomet’s socio-cultural past with walking
tours of the neighborhood and visits to sites of artistic and historical importance,
including Miró’s memorial to the Blomet artists. The festival further broadens the
scope of the neighborhood’s celebration of public art with outdoor theatre,
performance art, dancing, concerts and exhibitions of paintings created by local
amateur and professional artists. One of the highlights of the festival takes place
when children dressed in costumes walk in a parade led through the neighborhood
by a marching band before gathering around L’Oiseau lunaire, where many stand
on the base and grasp or sit on the sculpture’s anatomical projections (Figure 7).
Owing to Blomet Paradiso’s efforts and the participation of the community, a more
conscious awareness of the relationship between L’Oiseau lunaire and its site has
been developed among local inhabitants during the past several years.
Members of Blomet Paradiso have also undertaken several projects that aim
to promote a broader awareness of the sculpture’s meaningful function in the
Parisian cultural landscape. The Association has created two booklets dedicated to
some of the significant cultural and historical features of the neighborhood: La rue
Blomet dévoilée (Rue Blomet Unveiled) and 45/47, rue Blomet: Adresse d’artistes
(45/47, rue Blomet: Address of Artists), published in and 2006 and 2009
respectively, both of which pay particular homage to L’Oiseau lunaire, which is
featured on the cover of each. The latter booklet chronicles the creative
achievements of artists such as Miró, Masson, Desnos and several others formerly
living on the rue Blomet and it includes accounts of their life there; the chapter
dedicated to Miró explains both the history of the artist’s creation at his Blomet
studio and the importance of L’Oiseau lunaire as a memorial to the Blomet artists.
Since the booklet is currently available at local bookstores in Paris and has also
been sold at the Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and Musée Carnavalet, the
significance of Miró’s memorial sculpture has reached an extended audience
interested in the heritage of artistic creation in this residential neighborhood.
21
Figure 7. Children standing on the base of L’Oiseau lunaire while a marching band plays at the
Blomet Neighborhood Festival. 7 June 2008. Photograph courtesy of Association Blomet Paradiso.
CONFLICTS AND CONTROVERSY: THE POLITICS OF SITING MIRÓ’S

MEMORIAL
Blomet Paradiso’s most ambitious effort to publicize the significance of L’Oiseau

lunaire began in October 2007, when the Association’s officers made their first
request to the town halls of both the 15th arrondissement and the City of Paris to
change the name of the Square Blomet. Since local inhabitants had been
insufficiently aware of the rapport between the sculpture and the site’s rich history,
the group’s officers aspired to replace the park’s name with one that would refer
more explicitly to the artist whose memorial to the Blomet artists stood there.
When Blomet Paradiso first proposed changing the name to Square Miró,
municipal authorities informed the Association’s officers that a park named Jardin
Juan Miro (sic) already existed in the 13th arrondissement, and they denied the
organization’s proposal. Some months later, the Association requested that the
park be renamed Square de L’Oiseau lunaire. Pierrette Levêque, Vice President of
Blomet Paradiso, states that the organization’s officers made this choice as a
tribute to Miró’s sculpture, the rich past of the artists whom it memorializes and
those who most frequently come into physical contact with it: “the sculpture
honors all of the sculptors and artists who had resided there . . . and the poetic
name of the sculpture seems to us very ideal for a park frequented by children.”51
22
The Association’s officers also hoped that this new name would draw much greater
attention to L’Oiseau lunaire as an attraction in itself which, they presumed,
would lead a wider public to the square and inspire additional inquiry into the
sculpture’s role as a work of commemorative art.
In mid-2008, after both the Council of the 15th arrondissement and the city’s
Municipal Council approved Blomet Paradiso’s second request to change the
square’s name, controversy over the sculpture and the Association’s project
emerged. Political debates related to public art projects—from commissions and
funding to design, construction, placement and maintenance—have been
particularly contentious in recent years, owing to both a lack of sufficient financial
support for such undertakings and what the City of Paris considers an over-
abundance of art currently displayed in public. Moreover, the Association
encountered ideological tensions associated with what Malcolm Miles calls the
“ethos of modernism” pertaining to public art—when the interests of artists, dealers,
municipalities and local citizens contradict one another.52 After learning that
further consideration of the proposal was delayed by other administrative priorities,
the officers of Blomet Paradiso contacted municipal authorities in order to inquire
about the progress of their project. Philippe Lamy, President of the Commission of
Historical Sites and Monuments and Advisor to the City of Paris’ Council on the
Politics of Memory, responded to the Association by stating that rather than
honoring the request, the city was considering the possibility of removing L’Oiseau
lunaire from the Square Blomet—precisely because of disagreements over where it
was sited. Lamy referred to a letter that Aimé Maeght, director of the Galerie
Maeght, wrote to former Parisian Mayor Jacques Chirac on 5 March 1980. Although
Miró had requested that the sculpture be placed in the Square Blomet in 1969,
Maeght stated in his letter to the mayor that moving the sculpture to a substantially
more visible and accessible location in Paris would be preferable: “This sculpture is
still found in the same square, but who know this, who sees it [the sculpture]?
. . . this work offered to Parisians [is] found in a place so withdrawn, and almost
unknown. I hope that you might submit this problem to your services so that
L’Oiseau lunaire might one day soon be erected in a place that people frequent, a
[more prominent] square or park in Paris.”53 In response to the consideration of
removing the sculpture from the Square Blomet to a more central location, Levêque
contacted the Successió Miró (Miró Estate) in Barcelona. She aimed to solicit the
organization’s help in keeping the sculpture at the Blomet site and request support
for the Association’s objective of inaugurating the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire. In
her letter, Levêque stated: “As you know, . . . the Association Blomet Paradiso has
been working to draw attention to this work of art and the rich past of the Square
Blomet . . . If you desire that L’Oiseau lunaire, which magnificently commemorates
the history of this park, remain there, your input is essential in order to convince
those making such cultural decisions. This is urgent!”54
23
Levêque’s concerns prompted more research related to the Blomet L’Oiseau
lunaire in an archival dossier on the sculpture. One of the most significant
documents was a letter dated 21 May 1980, in which Chirac responded to Maeght’s
request to remove the sculpture from the Square Blomet. Chirac, a major
proponent of the fine arts, endeavored to improve the quality of municipal
planning and actively promoted commemorative monuments: during his tenure as
mayor between 1977 and 1995, more than half of the memorials erected in Paris
were dedicated to cultural personalities, including writers, artists and musicians.55
On the one hand, in his response Chirac stated that he understood Maeght’s
argument that L’Oiseau lunaire would be more visible to a broader audience in one
of the city’s more central districts. But on the other hand, the mayor emphasized
that the sculpture would lose the historical and cultural meanings that it acquired
when it was placed in the Square Blomet—and its ability to memorialize the
Blomet artists—if it were removed from the park (Figure 8):
It is certain that the 15th arrondissement does not have a cultural image
as prestigious as that of the central neighborhoods, where the majority
of great monuments from the ancien régime are concentrated, and
where, following a natural trend, our country strives, in its own turn, to
leave a mark on the urban landscape. In this spirit, one can easily be
seduced by the idea of enriching, by contributing a masterpiece of
contemporary sculpture, the heart of the City where the masters of the
past, . . . are already celebrated. . . . On the other hand, it is useful to
consider that there exists a specific historical link between L’Oiseau
lunaire and the Square Blomet, where Miró’s first Parisian studio
stood. This is moreover not a forgotten place, but a very busy garden,
in the middle of a highly densely populated residential neighborhood.
. . . This is why, all things considered, I believe that the transfer . . . is
inappropriate in the case of L’Oiseau lunaire.56
Chirac thus astutely recognized that the crucial symbiotic relationship between the
sculpture and its site would be lost if the City of Paris accepted Maeght’s request.
Miró, who read the letter in which Chirac refused Maeght’s proposal around
the time that the mayor’s missive was written—and shortly before the artist’s death
in 1983—reasserted the commemorative aims of the sculpture. He wrote by hand in
his maternal language of Catalan, partially on a page from a calendar planner
attached to the letter from Chirac to Maeght and partly on the letter itself,
a statement that he intended to be indicated on a plaque that would identify the
sculpture as a memorial to the Blomet artists of the 1920s. Miró’s message reads:
“In memory of 45, rue Blomet, in the fervor that gave birth to new ideas and in
homage of Robert Desnos.” In order to underscore the importance of this
proclamation’s reaching those visiting the park, Miró added that “[t]his sign must
be very visible to the public so that they learn why the sculpture was placed here”
24
Figure 8. Letter written by Jacques Chirac to Aimé Maeght on 21 May 1980, discussing the siting of
L’Oiseau lunaire. Photograph courtesy of: Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Ville de Paris, Centre de
Documentation et de la Conservation des Oeuvres d’Art Religieuses et Civiles de la Ville de Paris.
(Figure 9).57 Once Blomet Paradiso provided this document to the City of Paris, the
Municipal Council, encouraged by the present Parisian mayor Bertrand Delanoë,
once again reviewed the Association’s request and voted in favor of it. On 1
February 2010, a municipal decree was signed declaring that the City of Paris would
reinaugurate the square where L’Oiseau lunaire had been standing for 36 years.
25
Figure 9. Detail of Jacques Chirac’s letter to Aimé Maeght. Joan Miró’s message, written in Catalan,
intended to be displayed on a future plaque that would explain the role of L’Oiseau lunaire as a
commemorative monument. Photograph courtesy of: Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Ville de
Paris, Centre de Documentation et de la Conservation des Oeuvres d’Art Religieuses et Civiles de la
Ville de Paris.
CELEBRATING MIRÓ’S MEMORIAL: THE INAUGURATION OF THE

SQUARE DE L’OISEAU LUNAIRE
After more than two and a half years of negotiations between the Association
Blomet Paradiso and various administrative bodies of the City of Paris, a ceremony
was held on 19 June 2010, to inaugurate the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire in honor
of Miró’s work of public art and in memory of the Blomet artists formerly creating
at the site. As opposed to the small private event held for the sculpture’s first
dedication in 1974, an estimated 200 people attended the more recent inaugural
ceremony, which was advertised with brightly colored posters that were displayed
outdoors throughout local neighborhoods (Figure 10). The festive celebration was
hosted by prominent Parisian political figures Anne Hidalgo, First Deputy Mayor
of Paris, and Philippe Goujon, Deputy Mayor of the 15th arrondissement of Paris,
as well as the artist’s grandson Emilio Fernández Miró, who represented the
Successió Miró, and François Soubrier, President of Blomet Paradiso.58 Also in
attendance were Lily Masson, who spent part of her childhood living in the studio
of her father André Masson at 45, rue Blomet, and the latter’s granddaughter
Sonia, as well as Pierrette Gargallo, daughter of the Blomet artist, who also
periodically visited her father’s atelier in the 1920s. Accomplished scholars of
modernist art and literature including Marie-Claire Dumas, Jacques Fraenkel and
Etienne-Alain Hubert were also present. Dupin, Artigas and Planès, who
celebrated the dedication of the sculpture at the Square Blomet 36 years earlier,
26
Figure 10. Poster advertising the inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire. Photograph
courtesy of: Stéphane Martin.
likewise attended the inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire. After

unveiling the sculpture in the square now bearing its name (Figures 11 and 12),
Blomet Paradiso presented Emilio Fernández Miró with a mock-up of a sign that
would be placed at the front gate of the square at a later date (Figure 13).
27
Figure 11. L’Oiseau lunaire draped in a veil at the inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire,
Paris, France. 19 June 2010. Photograph courtesy of Association Blomet Paradiso.
The inaugural event included an exhibition of various forms of public art that
evoked Miró’s creative spirit. Children from local elementary schools, who wore
costumes inspired by the artist to the event, created colorful drawings of whimsical
figures and set up a miniature sculpture garden with artworks reminiscent of
Miró’s artistic aesthetic. Local professional and amateur artists in the Blomet
neighborhood also exhibited their own inventive painterly interpretations of
L’Oiseau lunaire. Photos, maps and cadastres (land survey maps) showing major
phases in the development of the property at 45, rue Blomet over more than 110
years were also displayed for public viewing. Among other activities held during
the day-long inaugural event, Dumas moderated a roundtable discussion with
Pierrette Gargallo and Lily Masson, who recalled some of their fathers’ experiences
in the Blomet studios—as well as their own memories of their childhood there—in
the 1920s. Dupin, Artigas and Planès reflected on the dedication ceremony held in
1974 and shared memories of their interactions with Miró and some of the other
Blomet artists that took place over several decades. The celebration thus joined
together inhabitants of the neighborhood with many other groups, including
friends and relatives of the Blomet artists, government officials, international
scholars, art critics, museum and gallery representatives and professional and
amateur artists. Moreover, the sharing of these diverse testimonies brought
together individual and collective memories that broadened the scope of the
sculpture’s function as a commemorative work of art all the more. Covered by local
28
Figure 12. The unveiling of L’Oiseau lunaire in the newly inaugurated Square de L’Oiseau lunaire,
Paris, France. 19 June 2010. Photograph courtesy of Association Blomet Paradiso.
newspapers and television broadcasts, the inauguration drew much attention to

the Blomet neighborhood and disseminated the importance of L’Oiseau lunaire as
a memorial to the artists creating at 45, rue Blomet to a broad viewership in Paris
and throughout France; websites devoted to the inauguration also enlightened an
expanded audience on a global scale.
Blomet Paradiso’s project reached its culmination the following year when a
large marble plaque (3583 £ 4941 inches), the cost of which was subsidized by the
City of Paris, was dedicated in the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire on 28 May 2011.59
The magnificent plaque, attached to the wall of a building situated directly along
the path leading to L’Oiseau lunaire, emphasizes both the site’s and the sculpture’s
historical and artistic significance by commemorating the numerous artists who
created and collaborated at the Blomet studios (Figure 14):
This Square is situated on the site of former studios where numerous

artists worked.
At the end of the 19th century sculptor Alfred BOUCHER met
Auguste RENOIR here.
Beginning in 1921, the Spanish sculptor Pablo Emilio GARGALLO
shared his studio with his compatriot Joan MIRÓ while their
neighbor André MASSON, painter and engraver, received his
friends—artists and writers such as Elie LASCAUX, Jean
DUBUFFET, Roland TUAL, Georges LIMBOUR, Michel LEIRIS,
29
Figure 13. Emilio Fernández Miró holding a mock-up of sign to be placed at the entry gate to the
Square de L’Oiseau lunaire, Paris, France. 19 June 2010. Photograph courtesy of Association Blomet
Paradiso.
Antonin ARTAUD, and Evan SHIPMAN and also the poet Robert
DESNOS who lived here from 1926 to 1930.
This cosmopolitan and convivial milieu contributed to the birth of
the Surrealist movement.
Joan MIRÓ donated to the City of Paris the bronze sculpture
L’OISEAU LUNAIRE, placed here in 1974 in memory of 45, rue
Blomet and of the fervor that gave birth to new ideas and in homage
to Robert DESNOS.60
The inscription thus honors Miró’s request that the plaque emphasize the
importance of the sculpture’s role as a memorial to the rich artistic heritage of 45,
rue Blomet and the Blomet artists’ role in inspiring new conceptions of artistic
creation that contributed to the development of modernist art while working there.
Hildago and Goujon again hosted this ceremony: others in attendance included
relatives of Masson and Gargallo, as well as Dumas, Fraenkel and several members
of the Association Blomet Paradiso. The French media widely reported on the
event and details of the ceremony were disseminated via the web. The celebration
coincided with the first major exhibition of Miró’s sculptures in Paris in nearly 40
years: the Musée Maillol in Paris hosted Miró Sculpteur (16 March–31 July 2011),
which displayed, among 98 other sculptures, a plaster model of L’Oiseau lunaire
used in casting the edition of Miró’s sculpture examined here.61 Because of the
30
Figure 14. Marble plaque commemorating the artists working at 45, rue Blomet. Placed at the Square
de L’Oiseau lunaire on 28 May 2011. Photograph courtesy of Association Blomet Paradiso.
attention that these recent events drew to Miró’s memorial and the newly renamed
square, important exhibitions dedicated to the artistic creation at 45, rue Blomet
are presently being organized at galleries in New York City and Paris.
CONCLUSION
As a vital part of the recently rededicated neighborhood park, Miró’s masterpiece of

public memorial art honoring the interactions, exchanges and collaborations among
the artists at 45, rue Blomet in the 1920s continues to reanimate that space today. The
inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire and the placement of the marble
plaque, which pays homage to both the Blomet artists and Miró’s sculpture that
commemorates them, ushered in a new stage in the evolving history of both the site
and the work of art. The names of Miró’s memorial and the square, which now refer
explicitly—and reciprocally—to each other, reinforce their symbiotic relationship and
provide an updated meaning and context to both. The history of L’Oiseau lunaire and
its ability to honor those meeting at the Blomet studios in the past—and at the Square
de L’Oiseau lunaire today—are thus a crucial testimony to the importance of public
memorial art and its central role in uniting local, national and international
communities—representing a variety of social, cultural and political backgrounds—
that have joined together as a collective whole. As Mel Gooding states, “public art
serves many purposes, but none can have more point and dignity than investing a
public space with a renewed vitality, extending its availability as a place to be, in which
a sense of identity and of the possibilities of civic life, are enhanced.”62 Members of the
31
Figure 15. Cadastral map of rue Blomet, 2012, showing the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire.
Association Blomet Paradiso and other local citizens, various individuals and groups
associated with art and the City of Paris have thus succeeded in highlighting the
former studios at 45, rue Blomet, Miró’s extraordinary public memorial, the Square de
L’Oiseau lunaire and today’s Blomet neighborhood on both the physical and cultural
maps of the French capital in their celebration of L’Oiseau lunaire (Figure 15).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I express immense gratitude to Pierrette Levêque, Vice President of the Association
Blomet Paradiso, who has greatly assisted me in my research on L’Oiseau lunaire
and the Blomet artists and has become a true friend. I also thank members of Blomet
Paradiso for having warmly welcomed me at their meetings, festivals, ceremonies
and other events in the Blomet neighborhood over the past several years. I am
grateful to the late Jacques Dupin, who passed away while this article was under
review, for sharing many of his memories of Joan Miró and insightful observations
32
on L’Oiseau lunaire with me. Finally, I thank the Office of International Programs
and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of North
Carolina Wilmington for funding much of my research in Paris as well as my
colleagues Ed Costello, Xavier Fatou, Pascale Barthe, Olga Trokhimenko, P.J.
Lapaire, Steve Young, Denise DiPuccio, Andrew Gross and Raymond Burt, for their
inspiration and encouragement during my research and writing on Miró’s sculpture.
NOTES
1
Harriet F. Senie, “Responsible Criticism: Evaluating Public Art,” Sculpture 22.10 (2003), http://
www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/dec03/senie/senie.shtml (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
2
Joan Miró, “Memories of the rue Blomet,” transcribed by Jacques Dupin (1977), trans. Paul Auster,
in Joan Miró, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. Margit Rowell (New York: Da Capo,
1992), 100. For additional insightful commentaries on his years at 45, rue Blomet, see Joan Miró, “A
Conversation with Joan Miró,” interview by Francesc Trabal, La Publicitat (14 Jul. 1928), trans.
Patricia Mathews, reprinted in Joan Miró, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 92 – 98.
3
Michel Leiris, “45, rue Blomet,” Revue de Musicologie 68.1 – 2 (1982): 59. Translation mine.
4
Armand Salacrou, “Le Groupe de la rue Blomet,” interview by Jean-Marie Drot, Les heures
chaudes de Montparnasse, eds. Jean-Marie Drot and Dominique P. Hardouin (Paris: Hazan, 1995),
185. Translation mine.
5
See André Masson, “45, rue Blomet,” in André Masson: Le rebelle de Surréalisme: Écrits, ed.
Françoise Levaillant (Paris: Éditions Hermann, 1994), 76–85; Masson, “La Rue Blomet,” in Masson,
Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier (Paris: Julliard, 1958), 67–92; Robert Desnos, “Joan Miró,”
Cahiers d’art 9.1–4 (1934): 25–26; and Ernest Hemingway, “The Farm,” in Clement Greenberg, Joan
Miró (New York: Quadrangle, 1948), 5. For extensive critical commentaries on the importance of these
studios in the broader context of the development of modernist art, see Dupin, Miró, trans. James
Petterson (Paris: Flammarion, 2012): 82–95 and Valérie Bougault, “Lilacs in Rue Blomet,” in Paris
Montparnasse: The Heyday of Modern Art, 1910–1940, trans. Murray Wyllie (Paris: Pierre Terrail,
1997), 171–81.
6
Joan Miró, “I Dream of a Large Studio,” XXe siècle (May 1938), trans. Paul Auster, reprinted in
Joan Miró, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 162.
7
Desnos, 25 – 26. Translation mine.
8
Anonymous, work order for the development of the Square Blomet, City of Paris Technical
Services of Parks, Gardens, and Green Spaces, n.d. This document is found in the archives of the
Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Ville de Paris-Conservation des Œuvres d’Art Religieuses
et Civiles de la Ville de Paris, Archives “Oiseau lunaire” (Direction of Cultural Affairs of the City of
Paris-Conservation of Works of Religious and Civic Art of the City of Paris, Archives “Oiseau
lunaire”), hereafter referred to as DACVP-COARC.
9
Jacques Dupin, letter to the author, 27 July 2007. Translation mine.
10
Below these inscriptions, “Epreuve de la Ville de Paris” (“Proof of the City of Paris”) was
subsequently stamped after Miró chose to donate the sculpture to the city.
11
F. Deridour, Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs, letter to M. Chasseraud, General Engineer of
Technical Services of the City of Paris, 23 Dec. 1969, DACVP-COARC. Translation mine.
12
Emilio Fernández Miró, Introduction, in Joan Miró, Sculptures, Catalogue Raisonné: 1928 –
1982, ed. Emilio Fernández Miró and Pilar Ortega Chapel (Paris: Daniel Lelong and Succession Miró,
2006), 16. These sculptures measure 1187 £ 921 £ 685 inches, 721 £ 687 £ 5 inches and 1887, 1734, 1285 inches,
respectively. For photographs and brief descriptions of these initial versions of L’Oiseau lunaire, see
Joan Miró, Sculptures, Catalogue Raisonné: 1928 – 1982, 48 – 49.
13
Dupin, Miró, 361.
33
14
Today five of the copies of this edition of L’Oiseau lunaire are found in the United States at prominent
museums and galleries: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Fairmount Park Art Association in Philadelphia; the
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection in Dallas; and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection in Los
Angeles. A sixth copy in the United States is in a private collection. The three remaining copies are
located in Europe at the Foundation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Madrid, Spain; and the rue Blomet in Paris. The Blomet sculpture is the sole copy of this edition
that stands freely in a public space. Three larger versions of L’Oiseau lunaire, also sand cast by Susse in
1966 and measuring 159 £ 139 £ 99 inches, 5181 £ 4541 £ 3321 inches and 14343 £ 9883 x 9021 inches, are
located in New York City. A version sculpted out of carrera marble in 1968 that measures 11881 £ 10683 £
7683 inches, is located in the Miró Labyrinth outdoor sculpture garden at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-
Paul-de-Vence, France. For photographs and brief descriptions of the various editions of the
monumental sculpture, see Joan Miró, Sculptures, Catalogue Raisonné: 1928–1982, 81–85.
15
Dupin, letter to the author, 27 July 2007. Translation mine.
16
I use the terms monument and memorial interchangeably here since the categories overlap to an
immense degree and one might argue that all monuments have commemorative aims; moreover,
while theorists have described differences between monuments and memorials in certain instances,
a critical consensus of opinion distinguishing the two terms has not been reached. For a recent and
thorough discussion of this complex issue, see Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in
America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 37– 48.
17
June Hargrove, The Statues of Paris: An Open-Air Pantheon (New York: Vendome, 1989), 7. See
also Thierry Dufrêne, Introduction, in Monuments et modernité à Paris: art, espace public et enjeux
de mémoire, 1891 – 1996, ed. Noëlle Chabert (Paris: Electra, 1996), 22 – 33.
18
Noëlle Chabert, Préface, in Monuments et modernité à Paris, ed. Chabert, 13. Translation mine.
19
Hargrove, 7.
20
Hargrove, 7.
21
Hargrove, 186.
22
Claire Blanchon, “Miró Sculpteur,” in Joan Miró (Bordeaux: CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de
Bordeaux, 1999), 27. Translation mine.
23
Peter Read, “Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme,” Monuments et modernité à Paris, ed. Chabert, 58.
Translation mine. In Chabert’s volume, theorists analyze in detail 50 modern public monuments and
memorials in Paris; L’Oiseau lunaire is named on a list of more than 100 important works of modern
public art erected in Paris since 1958 but the sculpture is not analyzed in this volume. See
Monuments et modernité à Paris, ed. Chabert, 183– 90.
24
Dufrêne, 29.
25
Helen Beale, “French Public Culture: Place and Spaces,” in Contemporary French Cultural
Studies, eds. William Kidd and Sı́an Reynolds (London: Hodder Arnold, 2000), 145.
26
Beale, 146.
27
Doss, 39.
28
For critical reviews of L’Oiseau lunaire written after it was exhibited for the first time between
1967 and 1972, see Dore Ashton, “L’Oiseau lunaire et L’Oiseau Solaire ont traversé l’océan,” XXe
siècle 30 (1968): 97– 99; David Sylvester, “L’Oiseau lunaire et L’Oiseau solaire,” Fondation Maeght:
Sculptures et Céramiques: du 14 avril au 30 juin 1973 (Saint-Paul-de-Vence: Fondation Maeght,
1973), 33– 35; Dupin, Miró, 320 –21 and 367; and Cati Chambon, La Fondation Marguerite et Aimé
Maeght (Paris: Maeght, 1993), 91.
29
Dupin, letter to the author, 27 Jul. 2007. Translation mine.
30
Ashton, 97. Translation mine.
31
Beale, 148.
32
Blanchon, 27. Translation mine.
33
Blanchon, 27; see also Isabelle Maeght, “Entre fondations nous nous sommes dit,” in Joan Miró,
Miró Sculpteur (Paris: Musée Maillol, 2011). Exhibition catalogue.
34
Dupin, Miró, 380.
34
35
Joan Miró, Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves: Entretiens avec Georges Raillard (Paris: Seuil,
1977), 27.
36
Dupin, Miró, 367.
37
Beale, 148.
38
Pablo Picasso, cited in Roland Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1971), 383.
39
Joan Miró, “Interview with Denys Chevalier,” Aujourd’hui: Art et architecture (Nov. 1962),
reprinted in Joan Miro, Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 269.
40
Antoine Amarger, letter to Daniel Imbert and Christian Henry, Mission of the Inventory of
Statuary Patrimony, 24 Oct. 1995, DACVP-COARC. Translation mine.
41
Amarger, letter to Imbert, 12 Dec. 1995, DACVP-COARC. Translation mine.
42
Alain (Emile Chartier), Vingt leçons sur les BEAUX-ARTS (Paris: Gallimard, 1931), 10. Translation
mine.
43
Beale, 149. Jennifer Geigel Mikulay also comments on the immediate audience’s physical
interactions with Alexander Calder’s La Grande Vitesse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, stating that “As
they play, these children are in direct relationship to the sculpture, but not as idealized or abstract
publics. Rather they are unique individuals engaged in fluid, creative responses to a sculptural
event.” Mikulay, “Another Look at La Grande Vitesse,” Public Art Dialogue 1.1 (Spring 2011): 12– 13.
44
Philippe Cheval, Chief Engineer of the Direction of Parks, Gardens, and Green Spaces, letter to Imbert,
6 Nov. 2006, and a series of four emails from Cheval to Imbert, 9–10 Nov. 2006, DACVP-COARC.
45
Senie, “Responsible Criticism: Evaluating Public Art,” Sculpture 22.10 (2003), www.sculpture.
org/documents/scmag03/dec03/senie/senie.shtml (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
46
Translation mine.
47
Beale, 140. For additional observations on this all too common dilemma, see Monuments
et modernité à Paris, ed. Chabert, 7; Mikulay, 6; Senie, Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition,
Transformation, and Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 94 – 95; and Senie,
“Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation,” in Art and Its Publics:
Museum Studies at the Millennium, ed. Andrew McClellan (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 185– 200.
48
Beale, 146.
49
The three expositions were: Miró à Montélimar: Le graphisme dessiné et gravé dans l’œuvre
sculpté de Miró, Montélimar: Château des Adhémar, 3 Jun.216 Sep. 1995, extended 16 – 24 Sep.
1995; Joan Miró au Donjon de Vez, 13 juin –18 octobre 1998: Sculpture de Femmes, Sculptures
d’Oiseaux, Sobreteixims, Donjon de Vez, 13 Jun.– 18 Oct. 1998; and Grande Exposition gratuite de
Joan Miró à Tours, Tours: Château de la Ville, 27 Oct. 2001 – 27 Feb. 2002.
50
Michel de Certeau, “Spatial Stories,” The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 117– 18.
51
Pierrette Levêque, email message to the author, 16 Nov. 2012. Translation mine.
52
Malcolm Miles, Art, Space, and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures (London: Routledge,
1997), 13. For a recent discussion of an analogous situation in American public art, see Doss, 31 – 37.
53
Aimé Maeght, letter to Jacques Chirac, 5 Mar. 1980, DACVP-COARC. Translation mine.
54
Levêque, letter to the Successió Miró, 3 Mar. 2009. Translation mine.
55
Hargrove, 321.
56
Chirac, letter to Maeght, 21 May 1980, DACVP-COARC. Translation mine.
57
“En record del 45, rue Blomet, a l’escalf que dóna naixença a noves idees i en homenatge a Robert
Desnos. Que es vegi visiblement per què s’ha posat aquella escultura allı́.” Transcribed and translated
by Marcos Canovas.
58
For a slideshow of photographs from the inaugural ceremony, see Association Blomet Paradiso,
http://blometparadiso.over-blog.com/ (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
59
For a slideshow of photographs from the plaque placement ceremony, see Association Blomet
Paradiso, http://blometparadiso.over-blog.com/ (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
60
Translation mine.
61
See Joan Miró, Miró Sculpteur, 38 – 39.
35
62
Mel Gooding, Public:Art:Space, A Decade of Public Art Commissions, 1987– 1997 (London:
Merrell Holberton, 1997), 13.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alain (Emile Chartier). Vingt leçons sur les BEAUX-ARTS. Paris: Gallimard, 1931.
Ashton, Dore. “L’Oiseau lunaire et L’Oiseau Solaire ont traversé l’océan.” XXe siècle 30 (1968): 97 – 9.
Beale, Helen. “French Public Culture: Place and Spaces.” In Contemporary French Cultural Studies.
Ed. William Kidd and Sı́an Reynolds. London: Hodder Arnold, 2000. 140 – 53.
Blanchon, Claire. “Miró Sculpteur.” In Joan Miró. Bordeaux: CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de
Bordeaux, 1999. 26– 29. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Joan Miró” shown at
CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, 21 May – 30 Aug. 1999.
Blomet Paradiso. 45/47 Rue Blomet: Adresse d’artistes. Paris: Blomet Paradiso, 2009.
———. La Rue Blomet dévoilée. Paris: Blomet Paradiso, 2006.

———. Slideshows of the inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire and plaque placing
ceremony. http://blometparadiso.over-blog.com/ (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
Bougault, Valérie. “Lilacs in Rue Blomet.” In Paris Montparnasse: The Heyday of Modern Art,
1910 – 1940. Trans. Murray Wyllie. Paris: Pierre Terrail, 1997. 171 – 81.
Certeau, Michel de. “Spatial Stories.” In The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. 115– 30.
Chabert, Noëlle. “Préface.” In Monuments et modernité à Paris: art, espace public et enjeux de
mémoire, 1891– 1996. Paris: Electra, 1996. 6 – 19.
———. ed. Monuments et modernité à Paris: art, espace public et enjeux de mémoire, 1891 – 1996.
Paris: Electra, 1996.
Chambon, Cati. La Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght. Paris: Maeght, 1993.
Desnos, Robert. “Joan Miró.” Cahiers d’art 9.1 – 4 (1934): 25 – 6.
Direction des Affaires Culturelles de la Ville de Paris-Conservation des Œuvres d’Art Religieuses
et Civiles de la Ville de Paris (DACVP-COARC), Archives “Oiseau lunaire”. Dossier containing
various documents related to the history of L’Oiseau lunaire.
Doss, Erika. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Dufrêne, Thierry. “Introduction.” In Monuments et modernité à Paris. Ed. Chabert, 22 – 33.
Dupin, Jacques. Miró. Trans. James Petterson. Paris: Flammarion, 2012.
———. Letter to the author. 27 Jul. 2007.
Gooding, Mel. Public:Art:Space, A Decade of Public Art Commissions, 1987 – 1997. London: Merrell
Holberton, 1997.
Hargrove, June. The Statues of Paris: An Open-Air Pantheon. New York: Vendome, 1989.
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Farm.” In Joan Miró. Ed. Clement Greenberg. New York: Quadrangle, 1948. 5.
Leiris, Michel. “45, rue Blomet.” Revue de Musicologie 68.1 – 2 (1982): 57 – 63.
Levêque, Pierrette. Various correspondence and conversations with the author.
———. Letter to the Successió Miró. 3 Mar. 2009.
Maeght, Isabelle. “Entre fondations nous nous sommes dit.” In Miró Sculpteur. Ed. Joan Miró, 10–15.
Masson, André. “45, rue Blomet.” In Masson: Le rebelle de Surréalisme: Écrits. Ed. Levaillant, 76–85.
———. André Masson: Le rebelle de Surréalisme: Écrits. Ed. Françoise Levaillant. Paris: Éditions
Hermann, 1994.
———. “À Joan Miró: pour son anniversaire.” In André Masson: Le rebelle de Surréalisme: Écrits.
Ed. Levaillant, 86 – 8.
———. “La Rue Blomet.” Préface de Georges Limbour. Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier. Paris:
Julliard, 1958. 67 – 92.
Mikulay, Jennifer Geigel. “Another Look at La Grande Vitesse.” Public Art Dialogue 1.1 (Spring
2011): 5 – 23.
36
Miles, Malcolm. Art, Space, and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures. London: Routledge, 1997.
Miró, Emilio Fernández. “Introduction.” In Joan Miró Catalogue raisonné: Sculptures 1928 – 1982.
Ed. Emilio Fernández Miró and Pilar Ortega Chapel. Paris: Daniel Lelong and Succession Miró,
2006. 15– 19.
Miró, Joan. Catalogue raisonné: Sculptures 1928 – 1982. Eds. Emilio Fernández Miró and Pilar
Ortega Chapel. Paris: Daniel Lelong and Succession Miró, 2006.
———. Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves: Entretiens avec Georges Raillard. Paris: Seuil, 1977.
———. “A Conversation with Joan Miró.” Interview by Francesc Trabal, La Publicitat (14 July 1928).
Trans. Patricia Mathews. Reprinted in Miró, Joan. Joan Miró: Selected Writings and
Interviews, 92 –98.
———. “I Dream of a Large Studio.” XXe siècle (May 1938). Trans. Paul Auster. Reprinted in Miró,
Joan. Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 161– 62.
———. “Interview with Denys Chevalier.” Aujourd’hui: Art et architecture (Nov. 1962). Trans. Paul
Auster. Reprinted in Miró, Joan. Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 262 – 71.
———. Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews. Ed. Margit Rowell. New York: Da Capo, 1992.
———. “Memories of the rue Blomet.” Transcribed by Jacques Dupin (1977). Trans. Paul Aster. In
Miro, Joan. Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews, 100– 04.
———. Miró Sculpteur. Paris: Musée Maillol. 2011. Published in conjunction with the exhibition
“Miró Sculpteur” shown at Musèe Maillol, Paris, 16 Mar. – 31 Jul. 2011.
Penrose, Roland. Picasso, His Life and Work. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
Read, Peter. “Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme.” In Monuments et modernité à Paris. Ed. Chabert, 58–61.
Salacrou, Armand. “Le Groupe de la rue Blomet.” Interview by Jean-Marie Drot. Les heures chaudes
de Montparnasse. Ed. Jean-Marie Drot and Dominique P. Hardouin. Paris: Hazan, 1995. 185.
Senie, Harriet F. Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
———. “Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation.” In Arts and Its
Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium. Ed. Andrew McClellan. Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2003. 185 – 200.
———. “Responsible Criticism: Evaluating Public Art.” Sculpture 22.10 (2003): n.p., http://www.
sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/dec03/senie/senie.shtml (accessed 9 Dec. 2012).
Sylvester, David. “L’Oiseau lunaire et L’Oiseau solaire.” In Fondation Maeght: Sculptures et
Céramiques: du 14 avril au 30 juin 1973. Saint-Paul-de-Vence: Fondation Maeght, 1973.
33– 35. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Fondation Maeght: Sculptures et
Céramiques” shown at Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paulde-Vence, 14 Apr. – 30 Jun. 1973.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Scott D. Juall is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of
North Carolina Wilmington, where he specializes in modernist artistic movements in twentieth-
century Paris and early modern European travel writing, cartography and visual culture. He has
edited a special issue of L’Esprit Créateur and has published articles in journals such as French
Literature Series, Etudes Rabelaisiennes, Renaissance et Réforme and Exemplaria. He is presently
writing two monographs: the first addresses artistic exchanges among avant-garde literary and visual
artists in Paris between 1910 and 1945, and the second treats early modern imperialism portrayed in
European travel writing on the New World. He teaches courses such as Travel Writing in Paris,
Portraying Paris in Writing and the Visual Arts, Medieval and Early Modern French Travel
Literature, French Immigrant Narratives and French Linguistics.
37

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Public Art Dialogue

L'oiseau lunaire: Joan Miró's Memorial to 45,

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE

L’OISEAU LUNAIRE: JOAN MIRÓ’S

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

for a remarkable group of burgeoning avant-garde artists. In addition to Miró,

order to commemorate the artistic interactions and exchanges among the

MONUMENTS, MEMORIALS AND THE SITING OF PUBLIC ART IN

A brief overview of the changing objectives of monuments and memorials in

progressed, in the domain of French public sculpture, “we witness a

MIRÓ’S SINGULAR MEMORIAL

RECREATION AND RE-CREATION OF MIRÓ’S SCULPTURAL

While the gradual physical degradation of L’Oiseau lunaire might be considered

Figure 5. Children playing on L’Oiseau lunaire. Photograph courtesy of author.

ASSOCIATION BLOMET PARADISO: CELEBRATING COMMUNITY

CONFLICTS AND CONTROVERSY: THE POLITICS OF SITING MIRÓ’S

Blomet Paradiso’s most ambitious effort to publicize the significance of L’Oiseau

CELEBRATING MIRÓ’S MEMORIAL: THE INAUGURATION OF THE

likewise attended the inauguration of the Square de L’Oiseau lunaire. After

newspapers and television broadcasts, the inauguration drew much attention to

This Square is situated on the site of former studios where numerous

As a vital part of the recently rededicated neighborhood park, Miró’s masterpiece of

———. La Rue Blomet dévoilée. Paris: Blomet Paradiso, 2006.

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