Giorgio Morandi: Lines of Poetry

Despite having been to the exhibition of wonderful works on paper at the Estorick Collection, I do not want to write about Morandi.

Out of all the painters of the 20th Century, he is perhaps the one who is least about words, who's work most scorns all verbal attempts at analysis. I could break down compositions and tricks. I could describe his approach. I could celebrate his astounding focus. I could but will not.

Instead, I give in full a quote they have pasted onto the wall at the current exhibition:

"We are not a people suited to growing complacent in bourgeois existence. The richest and most content of our bourgeoisie always have, at the bottom of their nature, something more unquiet and restless than the poorest peasant of more northerly and happier lands that are less warm and less bright. That this fatal melancholy sharpens our vision of the world is an undeniable fact. Italian art, in its more skeletally beautiful aspects is a hard, clean and solid thing. From such denuded forms, cleansed of unrestrained enthusiasm and improper joy, is born that chaste, austere and lofty spirit which represents the highest merit of our great painting from the primitives to Raphael. Today, the confusion which oppresses the arts is enormous; and the poor quality of the painting that floods the continents with torrents of greasy, oily colour is difficult to define. There is an abundance of foolishness, much lack of understanding, a great deal of banality and cheap sensuality – and as for spirit, one would search for it in vain.

'Therefore, it is with sympathy and a great sense of comfort that we have followed the emergence, development and maturing of artists such as Giorgio Morandi through their slow but sure labours.
He seeks to discover and to create everything alone: patiently grinding his colours, preparing his canvases and looking at the objects that surround him, from loaves of ‘sacred bread’ – dark, and riven with cracks like the surface of an ancient rock – to the clean forms of glasses and bottles. He looks at a collection of objects set on a tabletop with the emotion that shook the heart of the traveller in ancient Greece when he gazed upon woods, valleys and mountains believed to be the realm of beautiful and surprising deities.

'He looks with the eye of one who believes, and the innermost skeleton of these things – dead for us, since immobile appears to him in its most consolatory aspect: in its eternal aspect. In such a way he engages with the great lyricism created by the most profound European art: the metaphysics of the most commonplace objects. Of those objects that habit has rendered so familiar to us that we often look at them with the eye of one who sees but does not understand. … In his ancient Bologna, Giorgio Morandi sings in this way – in an Italian way – the song of the great European craftsmen. He is poor, since the generosity of art lovers has thus far eluded him.  And in order to be able to continue with his work with purity in the evenings, in the bleak rooms of a state school he teaches youngsters the eternal laws of geometric design – the foundation of every great beauty and of every profound melancholy."

Giorgio De Chirico

Go to the show, digest it as slowly as it was made, then walk away satiated and in silence.

Style and Expectation

On my recent trip to London I went to the Giorgio Morandi show in Highbury. I haven't written anything about it because I don't have a lot to say. It's good, it's interesting and it's worth a visit but, a couple of curiosities apart,  it didn't make me want to write. I will give a quick summary next week as there are things there which are important to me and I would encourage you to go but the thing that really struck me was when I overheard part of a conversation.

A lady in a remarkable outfit of a fine wool sweater - either cashmere or merino but certainly the brightest cerise in the world, ever - dark leggings and patent leather Doc Marten's was looking at an etching on the wall and comparing it to one of a similar subject in a book in a cabinet. Both etchings were depicting still lifes in similar arrangements. One was made in 1927 and the other in 1956. I was so struck by what she said to her companion that I wrote it down verbatim.

"This one is quite early. That ones later, its much better, its much more stylized"

Her point was that the later work was more in the recognisable Morandi style, with his distinctive treatment of space, ovals and tonality. This was equated with quality. There was a simple thought that the piece that was more typical must be better, because it looked more like it should look. The mannerism was more important than the individual composition. Of all the artists you could subject to this indignity, Morandi is perhaps the least appropriate. His work is about thought and careful observation, not following a formula. For me, this is the source of his rigour and integrity. If his work has certain common threads running through it, it is because it honestly and simply reflects his personality, his interests and his view of the world. This is, however, an interesting insight into the view of someone else. It may be the view of someone more typical than myself. For her, a Morandi picture should look one way and one way only. Does the same applies to other artists too? Is the criteria for judging Picasso's work how closely it resembles Les Demoiselles d'Avignon? This sits in contrast to what I believe is the artist's duty to grow and stretch himself and experiment, but if a lot of other people are more aligned with this lady than with me, it may be a key to commercial success.

There's no conclusion to this post, its just a thought I'm uncomfortable with but need to consider.