Memories - Miró and Yoyo - Surrealism - Magistracy



So many memories in this picture. I am this little girl of 7 years old who listens wisely to what the delicious Joan Miró tells me. It's in Saint-Paul, one day when Duke Ellington had come, with his musicians, to play under the sun, no audience, just my grandfather, Miró and the children.
Picture without era! I love Miró's tunic, with its double buttons on the collar. Mom had a way of dressing us, rather soberly for the time, with a white T-shirt that she had brought from the USA and moccasins. At school, no one cared about us, the others were in orange and brown stripes and sandals with big straps. Today, I am even more delighted with Mom's choice.

Joan Miró was like my favorite "uncle" to me.
I am 7 years old in this photo and we are at the Fondation Maeght where Duke Ellington came one afternoon. The gentleness, the kindness, the attention are readable in the look that Miró puts on me. His kindness allowed me to ask him a thousand questions, without fear, without hesitation. He guided me in the adventure of art and encouraged the development of my passion for all forms of creation.

After 14 years as a magistrate, I held my very last hearing at the Commercial Court of Paris as President of the 12th Chamber, the chamber in charge of "Treatment of corporate difficulties", i.e. in charge of receiverships and judicial liquidations. Memories... I must admit that I succeeded in restructuring and thus saving many companies. It was a challenge for me as well as for the judges of my chamber to whom I entrusted the cases.
Every week for 14 years, I devoted a day of hearings, a night of analysis of the files and the drafting of judgments, all on a voluntary basis. I learned a lot about the management of companies, employees and the difficulties of undertaking, but also about human nature.

The Surrealist group, Paris, 1930.
From left to right Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, André Breton, Hans Arp, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Rene Crevel, Man Ray.
I love it, because their eccentricity is in their works, in their thinking, while they are all very clean, shirt and tie. Dali and Ernst are really two very handsome guys, that doesn't spoil anything, right?

Miró at work, intensity!
Excerpt from "La Saga Maeght
"For Miró, my father fitted out the top floor of the printing house, under the roof. The artist made it his Parisian studio. He will be the most prolific artist: all techniques interest him, all sizes, all media. Dad introduced him to carborundum engraving, Miró was thrilled! .../... With this technique, the paper is like a sculpture and finds a third dimension. It would take several volumes of the catalog raisonné of Miró's original engravings and lithographs to compile all the marvels that came out of Arte's presses, more than a thousand titles of prints by the Catalan genius.../... I love hanging out there [in the ARTE print shop], the workers like me, as a child, I pick up scraps of paper to make folds or draw. I watch, amazed, the huge blank sheets of paper rush through the oversized litho presses, the sheet is as if sucked up by these enormous metal cylinders, quickly, I run to the end of the machine, the sheet comes out rich with a sublime red Miró, to be swallowed up again, another pass through the machine, blue is added, then yellow... It is magic! The workers are perched several meters above the ground, like proud ship captains. Always vigilant, they take care that I don't get a hand caught by these monstrous mechanisms."