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Lot Essay
Morandi's paintings exude a sense of calm and intense poise. Painted in 1957, Natura morta shows a tightly clustered group of objects, vessels placed with deliberation and consideration in a certain configuration. Morandi's paintings present us with a sparse vision of a world of harmony, and this harmony has been sought out by the artist through the painstaking arrangement and rearrangement of these objects. They have been placed in this way in order to capture a precise contrast of forms and colours that resemble, in their almost Zen perfection-through-imperfection, the Japanese art of ikebana, or flower arrangement. And as such, these objects become a focal point for our contemplation.
Morandi's reputation for reclusiveness stems from the discipline and modesty that characterised so much of his life and lifestyle. He lived with his sisters in Bologna, spending a great amount of his time in a dusty studio in which he had a constant rotation of dusty vases, bottles, lamps and glasses. These he would arrange with intense concentration in ways that appeared to capture some of the sense of elusive and arcane order that he sought to express, that he saw as underlying nature itself. And the contemplation that resulted in these arrangements translates to the viewer. We find ourselves looking at the tranquil, still, timeless, Chardin-esque world of this Natura morta, and the calm appears to spill from the canvas and into the viewer's world. A conversation with the artist recorded by Josef Herman provides an invaluable insight into the character and the thoughts of this mysterious painter:
'In a low voice, as though to no one in particular, he mused: 'What do people look for in my bottles?' I looked at him and he now looked at me. 'It is already forty years since I looked for some element of classical quiet and classical purity, a moral guidance perhaps more than an aesthetic one.' Then he changed the direction of his meditation. '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? Perhaps we all work too fast these days?'' (J. Herman, 'A Visit to Morandi', pp. 26-27, in L. Klepac, Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, exh.cat., Sydney, 1997, p. 27).
Morandi's reputation for reclusiveness stems from the discipline and modesty that characterised so much of his life and lifestyle. He lived with his sisters in Bologna, spending a great amount of his time in a dusty studio in which he had a constant rotation of dusty vases, bottles, lamps and glasses. These he would arrange with intense concentration in ways that appeared to capture some of the sense of elusive and arcane order that he sought to express, that he saw as underlying nature itself. And the contemplation that resulted in these arrangements translates to the viewer. We find ourselves looking at the tranquil, still, timeless, Chardin-esque world of this Natura morta, and the calm appears to spill from the canvas and into the viewer's world. A conversation with the artist recorded by Josef Herman provides an invaluable insight into the character and the thoughts of this mysterious painter:
'In a low voice, as though to no one in particular, he mused: 'What do people look for in my bottles?' I looked at him and he now looked at me. 'It is already forty years since I looked for some element of classical quiet and classical purity, a moral guidance perhaps more than an aesthetic one.' Then he changed the direction of his meditation. '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? Perhaps we all work too fast these days?'' (J. Herman, 'A Visit to Morandi', pp. 26-27, in L. Klepac, Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, exh.cat., Sydney, 1997, p. 27).