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Time & Perspective Quote by Joan Miro

"Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension"

About this Quote

Miro makes love sound less like a lightning bolt and more like a craft practice: repetitive, patient, almost stubborn. The line deflates the romantic myth of the artist as pure conduit for inspiration. Instead, affection arrives as a byproduct of time spent in close contact with a problem. You don t adore the canvas because it s already beautiful; you adore it because you have learned how it works, where it resists you, what it refuses to become. That is the sly emotional realism here: creation is a relationship, and relationships deepen through negotiated understanding, not instant chemistry.

The phrase "slow comprehension" is doing heavy lifting. Comprehension implies analysis, missteps, revisions, backtracking - the unglamorous labor most viewers never see once the painting hangs, finished and apparently inevitable. Miro is admitting that meaning is not fully present at the outset; it is discovered through making. The subtext is a gentle rebuke to anyone who demands immediate readability from modern art. If the artist must earn love through gradual understanding, why should the audience expect instant access?

Context matters: Miro came up in a European modernism that prized intuition and spontaneity, yet he was also meticulous about process, building dreamlike symbols out of sustained experimentation. His canvases often look playful, even childlike, but this quote reveals the adult discipline underneath. It is a defense of patience - in art, in perception, in staying with ambiguity long enough for attachment to form.

Quote Details

TopicArt
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Miro, Joan. (2026, January 16). Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/throughout-the-time-in-which-i-am-working-on-a-107054/

Chicago Style
Miro, Joan. "Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/throughout-the-time-in-which-i-am-working-on-a-107054/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/throughout-the-time-in-which-i-am-working-on-a-107054/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Joan Add to List
Joan Miro on Slow Comprehension and the Canvas
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About the Author

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Joan Miro (April 20, 1893 - December 25, 1983) was a Artist from Spain.

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