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拍品专文
Giorgio Morandi's reclusive life has become the stuff of artistic legend. Tucked away in his studio in the apartment in Bologna's via Fondazza that he shared with his sisters and, until her death, his mother, Morandi would move the bottles, vases, balls and boxes that were the recurring characters in his paintings, seeking some harmonious arrangement that appealed to his profound and subtle aesthetic sensibilities, and then capturing the result. He is usually presented as a form of hermit, contemplating scenes such as that in Natura morta, painted circa 1948, in an almost religious, monk-like manner. While none of this is inaccurate, there was more to Morandi than met the eye. He was a teacher of etching at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna for a long time and was a frequent correspondent with a wide circle of friends; while he travelled abroad only a couple of times to Switzerland during his life, he nonetheless visited many places and exhibitions in his native Italy and especially developed a love and respect for Florence and the artists of the Renaissance in Tuscany. Natura morta is evidence of the more social side of Morandi, as it was a gift from him to Giacomo Manzù, the celebrated Italian figurative sculptor with whom he would share an exhibition in Winterthur in 1956-- one of the rare occasions that he did cross the Italian border.
This insight into the friendship and mutual esteem between these artists is all the more fascinating because they were both concerned with using figurative means to convey an almost abstract subject. Morandi's still life paintings, like Manzù's sculptures of cardinals, are not concerned merely with the subject matter depicted. Instead, they provide an insight into deeper, more hidden dimensions; in the case of Manzù, this involved a combination of monumentality and spirituality. Morandi's concerns were with a more discreet spiritual, contemplative content. As he explained, 'I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else' (Giorgio Morandi, quoted in L. Klepac, Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, exh. cat., Sydney, 1997, p. 12). This atmosphere is perfectly conjured in the exquisite Natura morta, in which the scumbled light has been used, with incredibly subtle variations of tone amongst the warm organic browns and beiges that constitute so much of the picture surface, to harness a Chardin-like sense of inner harmony within the closed circuit of this corner of the artist's studio. The objects, as the focus of this tight composition, become strangely monumental and are imbued with a new significance that echoes the effect in the paintings he created when he was affiliated with the Pittura Metafisica artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, decades earlier. Regarding so-called abstract art, though, Morandi pointed out:
'I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all that we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. Only we can know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree' (Giorgio Morandi, quoted in E. Roditi, 'Interview with Giorgio Morandi,' pp. 143-55, K. Wilkin, Giorgio Morandi: Works, Writings and Interviews, Barcelona, 2007, p. 146).
It is in a layer underlying this simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude so ingenuously embraced by Morandi that we perceive the beauty of the world around us. Morandi has created a composition that is filled with an arcane rhythm that hints at a spiritual quality, a mystic truth. This is an abstract and philosophical message written in a hidden code, in the forms of these seemingly abandoned vessels. The stillness brings about a metaphysical atmosphere that appears to pierce the veil of understanding, to approach some revelation about the nature of the world around us. And the viewer is forced to wonder if the food which is making a rare appearance-- in this picture it is shown placed in the bowl and on the tall tazza, itself a rare element-- is real or is artificial, like the dusty silk flowers that had appeared in Morandi's Fiori. For it is through artifice as well as a hermit-like and hermetic contemplation that Morandi taps into the hidden dimensions that underpin the universe.
This insight into the friendship and mutual esteem between these artists is all the more fascinating because they were both concerned with using figurative means to convey an almost abstract subject. Morandi's still life paintings, like Manzù's sculptures of cardinals, are not concerned merely with the subject matter depicted. Instead, they provide an insight into deeper, more hidden dimensions; in the case of Manzù, this involved a combination of monumentality and spirituality. Morandi's concerns were with a more discreet spiritual, contemplative content. As he explained, 'I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else' (Giorgio Morandi, quoted in L. Klepac, Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, exh. cat., Sydney, 1997, p. 12). This atmosphere is perfectly conjured in the exquisite Natura morta, in which the scumbled light has been used, with incredibly subtle variations of tone amongst the warm organic browns and beiges that constitute so much of the picture surface, to harness a Chardin-like sense of inner harmony within the closed circuit of this corner of the artist's studio. The objects, as the focus of this tight composition, become strangely monumental and are imbued with a new significance that echoes the effect in the paintings he created when he was affiliated with the Pittura Metafisica artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, decades earlier. Regarding so-called abstract art, though, Morandi pointed out:
'I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all that we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. Only we can know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree' (Giorgio Morandi, quoted in E. Roditi, 'Interview with Giorgio Morandi,' pp. 143-55, K. Wilkin, Giorgio Morandi: Works, Writings and Interviews, Barcelona, 2007, p. 146).
It is in a layer underlying this simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude so ingenuously embraced by Morandi that we perceive the beauty of the world around us. Morandi has created a composition that is filled with an arcane rhythm that hints at a spiritual quality, a mystic truth. This is an abstract and philosophical message written in a hidden code, in the forms of these seemingly abandoned vessels. The stillness brings about a metaphysical atmosphere that appears to pierce the veil of understanding, to approach some revelation about the nature of the world around us. And the viewer is forced to wonder if the food which is making a rare appearance-- in this picture it is shown placed in the bowl and on the tall tazza, itself a rare element-- is real or is artificial, like the dusty silk flowers that had appeared in Morandi's Fiori. For it is through artifice as well as a hermit-like and hermetic contemplation that Morandi taps into the hidden dimensions that underpin the universe.