The first time I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art was in the Fall of 2015. I remember being surprised when I reached the second floor and discovered the George L. Viavant Gallery. Several Joan Miró paintings were hanging in that room, and one in particular dramatically stood out. The Red Disk was different from the usual Miró paintings I’d seen in museums throughout the United States. A large red disk in the middle of the painting is placed over a blob of white tendrils. The tendrils reach out haphazardly in all directions surrounded by white specks. The blob’s texture is more like that of an industrial spill, and around the red disk it looks as if the surface has been repeatedly rubbed. The disk is slightly off center. On its left is a much smaller transparent yellow dot. In the upper right corner there is a purple dot with an additional blue dot to the right of the red disk. All of this is set against a black and dark blue void.

In many ways, the painting is like a Rorschach inkblot. It can have a variety of interpretations. But what is not ambiguous about the painting is its explosiveness. The static paint tricks the eye and appears to be expanding outwardly and infinitely. Action and aggression permeate from the canvas. There is something bodily about it. It excretes a volcanic discharge. Without words, the painting seems to speak directly about the intimacy and violence of nature. It expresses something primordial in a way language cannot.