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At the end of this retrospective of the surrealist painter Joan Miró stands one of his last works, an enormous triptych featuring spatters of paint on a white background – inverted fireworks if you will. The paintings characterise what, for some, is wrong with modern art. Five triptychs, never displayed before, are the centrepiece of this exhibition. All share their simplicity and resistance to interpretation. One features a solitary, single black line drawn across three canvases.

This comprehensive exhibition, in its chronological look at the remarkable progress of Miró’s creative process, seems almost designed specifically to give works like this a sense of bulk, dialogue and significance.  Artists are not simply fountains of creativity and works do not stand alone, alien from their context. Artists have friends, families, idols, countries, loves and hatreds. It seems that works emerge more often from this melee than from some inner ‘vision’ of the artist himself. Miró’s gradual development through symbolism to surrealism and finally to a lack of form is traced here through a combination of major works, notebooks and studies, with additional context, both political and personal, provided by the curators.

His repeated motifs of stars, ladders and the Catalan peasant provide a framework on which to explore ideas of freedom and nationality. The Catalan peasant is gradually reduced to a triangular head and stick figure body showing the increasing archetypal significance of this figure for Miró and its importance in a resistance to the centralisation of power in Spain.

Another repeated figure, the ladder, is poignantly shown again and again. Curators obviously wanted to emphasise this symbol, the exhibition is even titled ‘The ladder of escape’. Alastair Sooke of The Telegraph has criticised the ‘politicisation’ of Miró in this exhibition, however, it seems impossible to view Miró’s works as distinct from his fierce Catalan nationalism. The chronology seems to act as a commentary of national events, as much as a commentary on Miró’s inner life.

The ladder is thought to be a connection between two worlds. Sometimes, as in ‘Dog Barking at the Moon’, it seems to have physical substance and depth. Yet in others, as in the ‘Ladder of Escape’ or ‘La caresse des étoiles’, the ladders are mere stick drawings. In a moving sketch titled ‘Naked Woman Going Up Stairs’, a tired, swollen woman with a huge nose climbs steps determinedly, face set. And yet in the background hovers this ladder once more, unable to take her weight, unable to offer escape. It is an odd combination of surrealism and more traditional figurative art and shows the meeting point of abstractions and life which Miró plays with throughout his works.

It is difficult to know how political Miró was ever trying to be. For a man promising to ‘assassinate painting’ he certainly left many paintings behind. While perhaps this retrospective pulls forward politics too much, the contradictions and rapid changes in style show Miró’s interest in matching form with event. He said an artist is someone who, “in the midst of others’ silence, uses his own voice to say something and who makes sure that what he says is not useless, but something that is useful to mankind.” This is not the voice of a man uninterested in politics and society.

Though the vast triptychs are perhaps the hardest of Miró’s works to understand, having walked through the thirteen rooms of Miró’s life and politics, those three ‘Fireworks’ canvases say more to the viewer than even his most famous work, ‘The Farm’. His resistance to form, even to toe the line of the Surrealist school he belonged to, was remarkable and continued into his eighties.

This retrospective is painstakingly ordered and curated to tell the story of Miró’s life and twentieth century Spain. Often overshadowed by his contemporaries, Picasso and Dali, this exhibition proves that Miró is more than worth the canvas he’s painted on.

Exhibition at Tate Modern runs until the 11th September

Tracey Emin’s current retrospective at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank is the first major survey of her work for a London audience. Allowing one the all-too-rare opportunity to stand back and view her produce holistically, it affirms that she is the quintessence of the postmodern artist. Why? Because at its core is not her artistic skill but, rather, herself.

These pieces are a visual record of a lifetime of self-induced introspection and personal cross-examination. She lays bare her most extreme moments of psychological and emotional anguish, to the extent that her navigation of the deep traumas in her life, such as the brutal sexual experiences of her early teenage years and her abortion, are played out before us. It isn’t really about art at all. It’s about her, about the experiences which have formed her mind and emotional state. The title, ‘Love Is What You Want’, suggests a conclusion drawn from long emotional hardship. Ironically, then, there is no empathy here, except for those individuals who have helped shape her own life, particularly her father. Attempts at universalising her feelings are half-hearted and a little trite.

Our encounter in the gallery is unnervingly intimate. She shows us bloodied hospital paraphernalia and how she masturbates in the bath. We see her fingerprints in the smudge marks on her drawings. Very private moments are made very public. This lack of formality is one of the most striking aspects of this exhibition- and the Hayward is in many ways quite inappropriate for showing this material. The text-covered quilts feel like they should be in a playroom, which would also be far more practical as one needs to read them to get a sense of their intended meaning. It would all be more comfortable away from these cavernous spaces, perhaps in the closeness of her house. This would, indeed, satisfy her objective far more closely. Such an effort is made to make us feel in her company through videos and letters that relocation to the place where she lives would surely be the natural progression.

One feels, however, that this journey of emotional discovery dominates to the deprecation of Emin’s sublime technical skill. She is a wonderful draughtswoman, her drawings inducing great pathos in their depiction of those low or challenging moments in her life. Sad Shower in New York shows what we presume to be her, standing under the falling water with a tormented expression, a second torso transposed on the first, giving the effect of a corpse, or a carcass, hanging from the shower head as if from a butcher’s hook. The tapestries, done with black thread on a white background, are in the same form as the sketches, yet, because of their cleaner and more disjointed lines and the more complex skill involved, feel detached from her and, as such, are rare moments of formality. More impressive still are the blown-glass neons, some giving messages in her handwriting, others images in the style of her sketches.

For all her best work, though, we have to tackle the swathes of ‘low’ art. Informality, designed to challenge, often comes across as pure laziness. The videos and memorabilia contribute in that they give us a more rounded sense of the artist, but when they are put up on a pantheon and forced on our attention, they seem to be beneath her, expressing a thought or an emotion by the easy path. The great skill is in translating these feelings in ways that are more technically difficult, and it is here that Emin is at her most impressive.

Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London until the 29th of August

The sideshow is leaving town. Beirut’s latest offering sounds like the final show of a fading circus group – mournful, certainly, but nonetheless triumphant and stately. Though the official press release calls it ‘sunny’, it is probably best to think ‘autumn glow’ rather than ‘tropical explosion’ – and far more important to know that it is actually really quite good, and best of all, a joy to listen to. At only 33 minutes in length, Zach Cordon and his crew of merry revelers have produced a perfect and very cohesive miniature that punches far above its weight, avoiding some of the more sprawling tendencies of greener releases. 

 At least part of this is due to the restraint exercised in the writing. While contemporaries like Arcade Fire are moving out and up, Beirut’s sound favours maturity over transgression, and is none the worse for it. Cordon abandons electronic frippery and goes back to Baroque-styled basics with piano, ukelele and horn, only occasionally yielding to the understandable charms of the pipe organ. The product is a rich, intelligent and sensitive album, although, with fewer experimental touches, one more likely to appeal to the masses. This is pop. More obvious earwigs (‘Santa Fe’) will nestle easily in mainstream radio, while gentler vintage Beirut (‘Goshem’) ensures that diehard folkies are unlikely to be alienated.

Though it plays like the soundtrack to the last act of The Most Wonderful Show on Earth, I suspect that this will not be the final stop for Beirut, and that there are still greater things to come. Do not be deceived by the very plain cover: you are unwrapping a brown paper parcel. For all its size, this is certainly not a ‘minor’ work, and one that should not pass you by. Don’t let it leave town without you.

With each new announcement regarding Icelandic superstar-turned-environmentalist Björk’s mammoth multimedia project, Biophilia, it seems confusion over its exact nature has only deepened. Not even Sir David Attenborough was able to provide a concise explanation of her vision, talking instead in vague terms about the “elusive places where we meet nature”. But whatever the questions still surrounding Björk’s project – be they about the iPad apps to accompany each song on the album, the supposed educational aspect of the project or, perhaps most importantly, her latest hairstyle – our picture of the musical side of Biophilia has become substantially clearer over the last couple of months. Having served us a tantalising 30 second clip of herself listening to the song in her car, Björk released Biophilia’s first single, ‘Crystalline’, at the end of June and has since followed up with two more, ‘Cosmogony’ and ‘Virus’.

Opening with a lullaby-like melody played on what sounds like a giant music box embellished with a cascade of stuttering chimes, ‘Virus’ is the outstanding track of the three, traversing a sparkling soundscape immediately reminiscent of Vespertine, Björk’s masterpiece of 2001. As Björk sings from the point of view of the titular invaders, “like a flame seeks explosives/as gunpowder needs a war/I feast inside you/my host is you”, ‘Virus’ confirms itself as the most lyrically engaging song Björk has penned since the personal explorations undertaken so fearlessly on Vespertine. As with all of Björk’s finest works, the melodies that weave throughout the track seem elusive at first, darting from sight almost as soon as they come into focus, but as familiarity grows so do the levels of delicate beauty possessed by this striking song.

‘Crystalline’ also provides a considerable degree of promise for Biophilia, exploring similar musical territory to ‘Virus’, with a sparse arrangement centred around a web of chimes, but with a more immediate vocal melody and rhythmic drive. Perhaps ironically though, this track, whose app will supposedly teach us about musical structure, is distinctly lacking in development as the song progresses. In place of the organic ebb and flow of ‘Virus’ we find instead a starkly linear, repetitive structure whose only attempt at progression comes in the jarring closing minute as a crude barrage of drum and bass breaks appear out of nowhere, virtually destroying the atmosphere of the preceding music. 

Following an ominous beginning of slowly rising vocals, ‘Cosmogony’ soon settles into what is the most straightforward, and probably the most faceless, song of the three singles. Backed by an expansive brass ensemble, Björk delivers a mid-paced ballad which is sadly lacking in any real spark and marred by some questionable lyrics – “heaven, heaven’s bodies/whirl around me” – rescued only by her typically sincere vocal delivery.

These singles present something of a mixed bag, then, but after just three glimpses at the finished product it is perhaps unfair to pass judgement on a project that is so obviously intended to be viewed as a whole. Whilst Biophilia will doubtless be an interesting and immersive experience, it remains to be seen how well the music will stand up when considered without reference to the multimedia aspects of this project.

Album titles are often throwaways: Destroyer’s Dan Bejar has admitted he just picks words to look pleasing on the sleeve. But sometimes they are laden with meaning: you didn’t need to hear Joni Mitchell’s Blue to guess the gist; Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation was the diagnosis for a decade. So when Jay-Z and Kanye West dubbed their mythical alliance Watch the Throne, they implied it would be an exercise in setting the bar.

The hype surrounding this release was by no means ex nihilo: it was fed by the gilded cover art, the pop-up store in Manhattan, the exorbitant samples, the exhaustive roster of production credits and features. Here were the two biggest MCs in the game bestowing upon us proof of their firm grip on the aforementioned throne (jointly-held though it may be).

To succeed on these terms is nigh impossible: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy managed, but it could only have been a product of West alone. Despite this, the optimists wished for something more from Watch the Throne than name-drops of Dolce and Louis; we got worse: Louboutin and Hublot. This streak of hip hop – mid-austerity no less – manages to find a level of materialistic gloating previously unknown. The most jarring disconnect comes on ‘Murder to Excellence’, a purported homage to inner-city homicide – “314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago” – suddenly interrupted by Jay-Z’s debauched interlude: “It’s a celebration of black excellence, black tie, black Maybachs.”

The cynics were right of course: what else could you have possibly expected from such a team-up? Taken knowingly, Watch the Throne is a mildly enjoyable slice of boast-rap. Skipping the built-for-billboard ‘Lift Off’ (on which Beyoncé’s admittedly considerable talents are mostly wasted) and the crass braggadocio of ‘Gotta Have It’, it’s fairly solid in its own run-of-the-mill fashion. The album even occasionally impresses, with standouts like first single ‘Otis’ (that absurdly includes the late Redding in as a ‘feature’) and the surprisingly candid fatherhood worries of the RZA-produced ‘New Day’. All eyes may still be on the throne, but its gild is beginning to flake.