"Pam! Pam! Zang! Zang!"

When Painter Joan Miro, 68 -- short, round-faced and seemingly as placid as a Buddha--withdrew from France to his studio home on Majorca five years ago, an uneasy lethargy settled over him. He imposed "a silence on myself. A fast." Instead of painting, he sat and thought. Then, two years ago, catastrophe." Systematically he tore up scores of paintings that he had done on cardboard, obliterated nearly a hundred done on canvas--an act roughly equivalent to burning up $3,000,000. "The paintings uttered soft cries when they saw I was destroying them," sighs Miro. "But I wasn't angry at the canvases. I was angry at myself." Finally, the "catastrophe" over, Miro went back to work.

Last week the new Miro paintings were on view in Paris' Galerie Maeght--to mixed critical reception. For the most part, the childlike "signs," the brilliant and charming fantasies were gone. In their place were some small paintings on burlap, priced as high as $16,000, which consisted of little more than a few black forms swimming through solid color. There was a whirling constellation, a burning sun-shape inside an amoeba-like splash, a few nebulous and milky canvases that were each rather uncertainly called "Painting."

To Be Nervous. In five versions of Seated Woman, the woman hardly made an appearance at all. In many canvases the once meticulous Miro had left hairs from his brushes imbedded in the paint. What did all this splatter and splutter mean? Plainly, the new Miro was mad at the world, and he was letting his emotions boil over. "I used crayon," says he of some thin colored lines in one painting, "because it was more nervous, Pam! Pam! Pam! Pam! Like a knife!" Commented the weekly France-Observateur sadly: "Disappointed spirits will conclude that this is not Miro."

Just how Miro manages to get so roiled up is something of a mystery, for his own life remains as methodical as an engineer's blueprint. He wakes at 5, meditates for a while, and then, in measured steps, proceeds to his white studio, designed by U.S. Architect (and fellow Catalonian) Jose Luis Sert. There, surrounded by favorite shapes and objects--a rotting rudder, a rusting anchor, a decaying sheet of metal, bits of pottery, and some toy turtles--he contemplates for about an hour. "By this time," says he, "I am filled with fury for my work, and I am ready to jump off the balcony." Instead, he paints through the morning. After lunch and a rest, he sets off at a brisk pace for a solitary walk on the steep roads near his house, stopping to examine a leaf, a butterfly, a chip in a wall. During the day he smokes just three cigarettes. He works until exactly 9:30 at night.

To Keep Boiling. "In my work," says Miro, mixing his sports a bit, "I must go directly to the goal, like a bull." His present goal is a series of huge (up to seven yards square) canvases with one-color backgrounds. There will not be much more to them, but that, it seems, is what will make them so hard to do. "When there is next to nothing," says Miro, "then it is difficult." But he hopes that his new anger will show through. "These paintings have cost me several months of boiling in the mind. You will see my fist, my lungs as they exhale and inhale." The paintings--perhaps 50 of them--will be "a resume of all my life and work, a synthesis of all I've done. I may fall on my face. But if I finish them, I will deserve two medals. Two." Then, doubling up his fist and trying to look fierce, Miro adds: "My work is a battle. Pam! Pam! Zang! Zang!"

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