Natura
Morta (still life)
(oil on canvas, 1956)
Museo
di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto
Morandi's
Italian Heritage
Giorgio
Morandi is one of those painters who, at first glance,
seem to defy categorisation. He was nicknamed ‘il
monaco’ (the monk) due to his reclusive
lifestyle. Morandi spent most of his life in his native
town of Bologna, both living and painting in his flat,
and seldom venturing far afield. This gave rise to his
initial reputation as a provincial artist, but the obvious
quality of his paintings gradually forced a reappraisal
of his work and established him as one of the best modern
Italian painters and its greatest master of Natura Morta
(still life) in the 20th century.
Although
Morandi does not fit comfortably into to the canon of
movements in modern art, his paintings are stylistically
embedded in the Italian tradition. Initially influenced
by the metaphysical painting of his countrymen, Giorgio
de Chirico and Carlo
Carrà,
his work was also deeply rooted in the art of the early
Italian Renaissance, particularly Giotto, Uccello and
Piero della Francesca.
Morandi
Still Life (1955) and San
Gimignano - an Italian Medieval Town
Even
Morandi's compositions and choice of still lifes objects
allude to his Italian heritage. When assembled together
in a still life group, his dusty bottles and boxes take
on an monumental quality that evokes the architecture
of medieval Italy - a style with which he seems at ease.
Morandi's own city of Bologna has many examples of medieval
architecture and is home to the oldest functioning university
in the world: the "Alma Mater Studiorum", founded
in 1088.
Morandi's
Still Life Objects
Morandi
deliberately limited his choice of still life objects
to the unremarkable bottles, boxes, jars, jugs and vases
that were commonly found in his everyday domestic environment.
He would then 'depersonalise' these objects by removing
their labels and painting them with a flat matt colour
to eliminate any lettering or reflections. In this condition
they provided him with an anonymous cast of ready-made
forms that he could arrange and rearrange to explore their
abstract qualities and relationships.
Francisco
de Zurbarán (1598-1664)
Still
Life with Pottery Jars
(oil on canvas, 1630s)
Museo
del Prado, Madrid
Still
life as the theatre of visual relationships had its roots
in some of the earliest examples of the genre. Francisco
de Zurbarán's 17th century masterpiece, 'Still
Life with Pottery Jars' parades four prima donnas,
each competing with the other for the attention of their
audience. Morandi's characters, however, are the opposite
of these: a humble but disciplined chorus singing in perfect
harmony.
Morandi's
Intensity of Observation
In
the hands of a lesser artist, Morandi's restricted choice
of subject matter could give rise to a series of boring
repetitive images. What elevates his work to a higher
plane is the remarkable intensity of his observation.
Today,
we were bombarded with images from print and multimedia
and are accustomed to absorbing them at breakneck speed.
To slow down and focus on one image for a length of time
is against our conditioning, but this is precisely what
Morandi does in his painting and what he expects from
his audience.
Like
Chardin,
the greatest still life painter of the 18th century, Morandi
always looked at his still life objects as if he was seeing
them for the first time. He slowly contemplated each object,
profoundly searching for its visual dynamic within the
still life group. When satisfied with an arrangement,
he would draw around the bases of the objects to finalise
their positions. "It takes me weeks to make up
my mind which group of bottles will go well with a particular
coloured tablecloth......Then it takes me weeks of thinking
about the bottles themselves, and yet often I still go
wrong with the spaces. Perhaps I work too fast?"
It is this intensity of contemplation and observation
that gives a freshness and individuality to each of Morandi's
paintings, even if the same objects are used repeatedly
in different works.
Morandi's
Light
'I
am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition
that communicates a sense of tranquility and privacy,
moods which I have always valued above all else'.
Giorgio
Morandi
Still
Life with Cups and Boxes
(oil on canvas, 1951)
Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
Morandi's
carefully balanced colours and tones always convey a peaceful
mood. Some paintings are bright and sunlit, whereas others
are subdued with a less obvious light source. However,
each of his pictures has a certain quality of light that
suggests it was painted at a particular time of day or
under specific lighting conditions. This distinctive use
of light and his continuous exploration of similar images
insinuates the influence of Monet's serial paintings of
'Haystacks'
and 'Rouen
Cathedral'.
Giorgio
Morandi
Still
Life
(oil on canvas, 1960)
Private
Collection
If,
as Marcel Proust puts it, Chardin's still lifes were summoned
“out of the everlasting darkness in which they have
been interred”, then Morandi's still lifes slowly
emerge from the light that sculpts their form.
Given
Morandi's slow contemplation of the elements of his art
and the fact that he had to cope with the transient effects
of light, it is clear that his pictures were developed
over a long period of time. This helps to explain the
uncertainty of the outlines of his forms, as he grafts
the subtleties of one day's observations on top of the
next. These wavering images also recall the work of Paul
Cézanne who had a similarly patient approach
to painting.
The
unique style of Giorgio Morandi's work may be difficult
to place within the movements of modern art, but it is
so steeped in influences from Giotto in the 13th century
to metaphysical art in the 20th, that it acquires an ageless
quality - a characteristic that identifies most great
art.
Key
Notes about Giorgio Morandi
