Between the Eyes

"Painting or poetry is made as we make love," says Painter Joan Miro, "a total embrace, prudence thrown to the wind, nothing held back. . . ."

That sounds fine, but it is not much help in understanding Miro's pictures. Last week the bouncy little Spaniard opened a new show in Manhattan which was as bright and baffling—and as childlike—as ever. Miro's wildly swooping lines looked as if they had been cast like lassoes into vast space. Tangled up in them were stars, teeth, mustachios, moons, flying eyes, arrows and balloons. Sometimes the random objects coalesced into...