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This is one of my favourite Joan Mir� lithographs, mostly because of the strength of the image with its vivid colour and lively composition, but also because of its hilarious title. It was created in 1952 in atelier Mourlot for the art revue Verve, published by T�riade. The double issue in which it appeared (no. 27-28) is one of the most sought-after issues of this legendary publication, as it contains not just this astonishing work by Mir� but also Chagall's Visions de Paris (8 lithographs), Matisse's La tristesse du roi, L�ger's La partie de campagne, and additional lithographs by Braque, Henri Laurens, Alberto Giacometti, Andr� Masson, Francisco Bor�s, and Marcel Gromaire. Joan Mir�, The Dog Barking at the Moon Lithograph, 1952 The full title of the Mir� is lithographed in Mir�'s hand on the reverse of the print: Le chien aboyant � la lune reveille le coq le chant du coq picote le crane du fermier Catalan pos� sur la table � cot� du pourron. The dog barking at the mo

What on earth kind of print can be on the other side of this? Oakey's Waterproof Flint Paper, made expressly for wet-rubbing-down by Wellington Mills, London? The answer is a stencilled intepretation of an untitled painting by Joan Mir�. It is printed on this extraordinary sandpaper support because that is what Mir� himself had used for the original. The artist responsible for the stencil was John Piper. Piper recalls this episode in "Working with Printers", written in 1987 for Orde Levinson's catalogue raisonn�, "Quality and Experiment": The Prints of John Piper. Remembering Curwen's support for the avant-garde journal Axis: A Quarterly Review of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, which was edited by Piper's wife-to-be Myfanwy Evans and published by A. Zwemmer, Piper writes, "He even encouraged me to reproduce a Mir� which had been painted on glass paper, on real glass paper , and bound it into Signature." It appeared in Signature 7 in 1