I thought it would be fitting to start with one of the iconic images of Morandi looking into his subject. His immersion is so complete that we're strained in imagining that he wasn't alone with his bottles and jars.
I have yet to meet a painter who doesn't love his work. Perhaps more than with any other artist that comes to mind, painters flock to his shows with the fervor of pilgrims. Why ? What is it that the paintings themselves show us in the formal compositional sense and also what do they tell us about a practice which is in turns both contemplative and analytic .
There is a discernible tipping point for an artist in creating a still life when his allegiance shifts from what is on the table to what is on the canvas, the moment when the painting itself sparks to life. Yet Morandi had a rare husbandry with his objets morts many of which he painted for 50 years . He didn't leave them easily , which is one reason why his fore's into portraiture and narrative painting were short lived. A distinction for me to make is that he was no fetishist, working in service to *particular* forms despite the regularity of his motif , but rather an obdurate and devoted student of form itself; form that he anchored on the table before him as one would foot soldiers or chess pieces. This predilection makes him a natural extension of Cezanne, another painter primarily interested in form, but in Cezanne's example, form as it left the table and entered the work manifesting in oil pigment.
While Morandi's self editorializing was renowned - he famously referred visitors to a great mound of scraped off pigment he called his "legacy" , his actual process as we can sense in the photos of him working, was a controlled refinement characterized more commonly by miniaturists than painters working in a quasi sculptural mode.
Over the decades the grained silt of Bologna covered his studio in dust and his palette gradually acquiesced, predominating in chalky hues.
In this space I'm going to write out some of my notions about art , and endeavor as Morandi did, to not overtake my primary enthusiasm which is looking. To that end, I hope anyone who reads these things and has a relevant view will share it along with images as they see fit.
I have yet to meet a painter who doesn't love his work. Perhaps more than with any other artist that comes to mind, painters flock to his shows with the fervor of pilgrims. Why ? What is it that the paintings themselves show us in the formal compositional sense and also what do they tell us about a practice which is in turns both contemplative and analytic .
There is a discernible tipping point for an artist in creating a still life when his allegiance shifts from what is on the table to what is on the canvas, the moment when the painting itself sparks to life. Yet Morandi had a rare husbandry with his objets morts many of which he painted for 50 years . He didn't leave them easily , which is one reason why his fore's into portraiture and narrative painting were short lived. A distinction for me to make is that he was no fetishist, working in service to *particular* forms despite the regularity of his motif , but rather an obdurate and devoted student of form itself; form that he anchored on the table before him as one would foot soldiers or chess pieces. This predilection makes him a natural extension of Cezanne, another painter primarily interested in form, but in Cezanne's example, form as it left the table and entered the work manifesting in oil pigment.
While Morandi's self editorializing was renowned - he famously referred visitors to a great mound of scraped off pigment he called his "legacy" , his actual process as we can sense in the photos of him working, was a controlled refinement characterized more commonly by miniaturists than painters working in a quasi sculptural mode.
Over the decades the grained silt of Bologna covered his studio in dust and his palette gradually acquiesced, predominating in chalky hues.
In this space I'm going to write out some of my notions about art , and endeavor as Morandi did, to not overtake my primary enthusiasm which is looking. To that end, I hope anyone who reads these things and has a relevant view will share it along with images as they see fit.