in the ancient catalan city of tarragona, joan miro meets with young master weaver josep royo to discuss the transformation of his painting into a 10-meter-high tapestry. studying a photograph of the maquette, they consider how best to translate miro's art into a heavily- textured weaving, which would capture the spirit of his concept. royo has an enormous task before him. in this converted flour mill in tarragona, many months of preparation are needed before the weaving itself can begin. nearly four miles of heavy cotton line is measured, stretched and chained for use as the tapestry's vertical warp. royo has developed a unique loom for weaving large tapestries. it has been built to accommodate the 20-foot width and th420-warp thrds which st be accurately aced a held in line. after all the warps have been laid out, each more than 50 feet in length, they are wound s onto a huge drum before finally being transferred to a massive overhead roller and stretched tight. on a cold february morning in 1977, the loom is ready for the weaving process to begin. the wool for the weft was imported fr

surrealist artist, the painter poet, is exemplified by the sculptor alexander calder and the painters joan miro and max ernst. using poetic techniques of free association, they explored ways of reducing the conscious control of the rational mind. miro's paintings from the twenties, like siesta, seem to have no structure, just a loose, free flow of images which seem to come out of the blue. max ernst-- using a technique of rubbing natural objects such as wood, shells, and leaves-- managed to bring forth unforeseen images, creating landscapes that are truly surreal. this painting of 1927 is called forest. ironically, it was in those societies which claimed the most far-reaching utopian ideals that the fiercest backlash against modern art and abstraction took place. stalin in russia, hitler in germany, reviled modern art as degenerate, decadent, and elitist, and they sought to replace it forcibly by an art portraying the proletarian glories of their new order-- a kind of heroic social realism, in which, ultimately, the political meaning was absolutely unambiguous and totally controllable, which it