Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi, Spring 2009, pp 88-89
It is always amusing when the church of culture (located at the corner of fashion and indifference) finds its hidden soul and solemnly gesticulates before one of the high priests of poetry and aesthetic reserve. In an art world obsessed by public profile and snarling cosmopolitanism, the case of Giorgio Morandi—the cloistered and insular Italian artist of the first half of the 20th century best known for his extraordinary still-life paintings and empty landscapes—makes all but the most devout cynic or ossified realist deeply confused. Morandi is the artist that, if the current gush of criticism stands for anything, we are all supposed to love…while simultaneously loathing just about all the values his work stands for (artistic autonomy, authenticity, formal invention, patience, longing, etc.) when they are present in the work of others. Clearly, I never got the memo, but hey, I can be as pious and hypocritical as the next guy. So until further notice (or until I do get a memo), Morandi is a god.
The exhibition “Giorgio Morandi, 1890–1964” is the result of the collective efforts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. It is, as retrospectives go, ambitious (or as ambitious as 100 or so modest easel paintings will allow), complete with all the requisite trappings one comes to expect from a major venue: a huge exhibition catalogue, a lecture series and loads of press. It is, by even the most hard-hearted standards, an exquisite, at times breathtaking show. The exhibition draws liberally from the entire span of the artist’s career, from his early flirtation with Italian Futurism through four decades devoted almost exclusively to the challenges and small victories associated with making rigorous, heartfelt still life paintings. There is also a small sampling of the artist’s stunning etchings and even a few sparse watercolours; together, they belie the notion that the artist’s unique vision was inextricably tied to oil paint.
Individually, the works float in a seemingly timeless, otherworldly space, so complete in and of themselves that they quite literally seem to squeeze out language, or at least the critical chatter that so often squeezes the life out of art. Sure, there are the obvious references to northern Italian colour and the palette of Piero, the clear interest in architecture and perhaps most crucially the artist’s indebtedness to Cézanne, but somehow, all the interpretive machinery one usually employs to read a work—like context and history and metaphor—seem beside the point when you are standing there, gobsmacked by how a few homely bottles can synthesize the whole world.
Indeed, what makes Morandi’s painting so compelling is how, with seeming effortlessness, he takes us out- side of our own skepticism and critical detachment and invests us in the pure experience of looking. This is no small challenge in a world where everything is relational and being derivative is simply taken as fact. And if one Morandi painting can do this, then the cumulative effect of a hundred of them together in one place at one time is enough to make you believe once again in gooey things like transcendence or, worse, spirituality. This is art as religion—minus the opiate. And it feels pretty good!
If I wrote that about just about anyone working today, I would be accused of either having lost my mind or wanting to sleep with the artist. I guess that is why it is always better to wait until an artist is dead before gushing too profusely. And as for my mind, I think I left it back in one of Morandi’s still lifes. Don’t worry, I’ll send postcards.
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