Joan Miró’s Iowa mural looks like history after chugging three Super Big Gulps and no sleep. Indians, pioneers, forts,
riverboats — all bouncing around in bright colors and weird floating shapes.
The Mississippi River twists through the whole thing like a giant blue snake
that escaped from a Looney-Tunes cartoon.
Nothing makes sense. That’s the fun of it.
Miró painted feelings more than reality, so Iowa history turns into this wild,
happy dream filled with stars, squiggles, moons, and shapes.
Salvador Dalí’s version looks like the frontier wandered into somebody’s fever dream. Wagons melt. Faces droop. The river stretches forever while creepy skies hang over everything. Even the clocks look exhausted.
The painting feels strange, dramatic, and a little unhinged. Dalí loved taking normal scenes and twisting them into something bizarre. His Iowa looks like Lewis and Clark got lost inside a nightmare and marched west, anyway.
