Alina Cohen
A nubby canvas supports
creamy pastel brushstrokes that coalesce into the rippling edges of bowls, a
vase,a folded yellow cloth, and a jar in Giorgio Morandi’s Natura morta (Still
Life) (1952), a representative work from his larger, decades-long series of still
lifes. The lushly textured props, positioned atop a brown surface that looks
more like unformed clay than a table, bump against one another in the center of
the painting. The background is a monochromatic tan, while two lines—a thin
brown one dividing the painting in half horizontally, and a thicker, gray-brown
strip at the bottom—suggests the table’s edges. The setting is hazy, veering
into abstraction; color, shape, and mood interested Morandi more than realistic
renderings of objects and places. This painting, like much of the artist’s
oeuvre, allows a temporary escape into a delectably quiet, timeless aesthetic
environment.
Morandi is famous for
transforming simple cups, jars, and bottles into objects of reverence. Spending
most of his life (1890–1964) in Bologna, the artist returned to his studio day
after day for decades, reconfiguring and repainting the same mundane tokens of
domestic life. Morandi looked at only a few unexceptional objects throughout
his career, but found infinite permutations and perspectives to depict them.
The artist’s humble yet masterful practice argues for the importance of small,
poetic gestures in lieu of large, flashy statements. “In my ideal world,” Peter
Schjeldahl once wrote, “the home of everyone who loves art would come equipped
with a painting by Giorgio Morandi, as a gymnasium for daily exercise of the
eye, mind, and soul.”

Schjeldahl has also
suggested a connection to the impastoed work of midcentury painter Philip
Guston. Similarly, Wayne Thiebaud’s depictions of cakes from the 1960s, which
employ thick dabs of paint as a baker might use frosting, literalize the
sumptuous application of paint that Morandi seemed to advocate. More recently,
artists like Sean Scully and Vija Celmins have written about Morandi’s effect
on their practices. Contemporary artists’ overall admiration for Morandi’s
technique has led to his reputation as a “painter’s painter,” though his work
is also easy on the uninitiated eye……………….
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-giorgio-morandis-beloved-lifes-unsettling-ties-20th-century-fascism?utm_medium=email&utm_source=14849717-newsletter-editorial-daily-10-23-18&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-V
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