And the prize for the best title goes to... Joan Miró

This is one of my favourite Joan Miró lithographs, mostly because of the strength of the image with its vivid colour and lively composition, but also because of its hilarious title. It was created in 1952 in atelier Mourlot for the art revue Verve, published by Tériade. The double issue in which it appeared (no. 27-28) is one of the most sought-after issues of this legendary publication, as it contains not just this astonishing work by Miró but also Chagall's Visions de Paris (8 lithographs), Matisse's La tristesse du roi, Léger's La partie de campagne, and additional lithographs by Braque, Henri Laurens, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Francisco Borès, and Marcel Gromaire.

Joan Miró, The Dog Barking at the Moon

Lithograph, 1952

The full title of the Miró is lithographed in Miró's hand on the reverse of the print: Le chien aboyant à la lune reveille le coq le chant du coq picote le crane du fermier Catalan posé sur la table à coté du pourron. The dog barking at the moon wakes the cock, the song of the cock pecks at the head of the Catalan farmer resting on the table by the flask of wine.

Joan Miró, Le chien aboyant à la lune (title)

Lithograph, 1952

Like the other double page lithographs in this edition of Verve, The Dog Barking at the Moon has a central vertical fold, and tiny, barely-visible, threadholes where it was bound into the revue. And like almost all Verve lithos, there are additional lithographs on the reverse - in this case the title, and what seems like a preparatory sketch for the main composition.

Joan Miró, Preparatory study for The Dog Barking at the Moon

Lithograph, 1952

Below are a few more choice images from this wonderful edition of Verve, none of which comes close to the Miró for Monty Python-esque lunacy of concept or title.

Marc Chagall, Vision of Paris

Lithograph, 1952

Marc Chagall, Place de la Concorde

Lithograph, 1952

Henri Matisse, La tristesse du roi

Lithograph, 1952

Georges Braque, Untitled (Birds)

Lithograph, 1952

Henri Laurens, Daphne

Lithograph, 1952

Alberto Giacometti, L'arbre

Lithograph, 1952

André Masson, Le torrent

Lithograph, 1952

Francisco Borès, La femme en bleu

Lithograph, 1952

Marcel Gromaire, Intérieur flamand

Lithograph, 1952

Fernand Léger, La partie de campagne

Lithograph, 1952

Oakey's waterproof flint paper

What on earth kind of print can be on the other side of this? Oakey's Waterproof Flint Paper, made expressly for wet-rubbing-down by Wellington Mills, London?

The answer is a stencilled intepretation of an untitled painting by Joan Miró. It is printed on this extraordinary sandpaper support because that is what Miró himself had used for the original. The artist responsible for the stencil was John Piper. Piper recalls this episode in "Working with Printers", written in 1987 for Orde Levinson's catalogue raisonné, "Quality and Experiment": The Prints of John Piper. Remembering Curwen's support for the avant-garde journal Axis: A Quarterly Review of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, which was edited by Piper's wife-to-be Myfanwy Evans and published by A. Zwemmer, Piper writes, "He even encouraged me to reproduce a Miró which had been painted on glass paper, on real glass paper, and bound it into Signature." It appeared in Signature 7 in 1937.

Regarding the Paramat blocks used to create the image, Piper writes, "They consisted of a thin sheet of aluminium mounted by a thin sheet of rubber composition which could be cut away with a model maker's knife to leave the area required in relief which could then be inked and printed... It was a poor man's parallel to the French 'pochoir' process, all hand done, involving girls with stencils and which produced beautiful results in pricey art books in Paris." As Piper, notes, this technique was also used at Curwen; in fact Harold Curwen improved the pochoir process, which had been brought to a pitch of near-perfection by Jean Saudé, by replacing metal stencils with transparent plastic ones, so that the "girls with stencils" could see what they were doing when they hand-applied the colour.