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The Melancholy of Objects

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.
 
In the exhibition of the etchings by Giorgio Morandi (“Giorgio Morandi: Lines of Poetry” until 7th April) at The Estorick Collection in London, nothing much changes. Nothing much changes – but each work is new and exciting, a revelation.  There are 80 works on paper, the earliest from 1912, the latest from the early 60’s, many on loan from Bologna’s Modern Art Museum, others from the Estorick’s own collection.  Most works are still lifes or landscapes, there are only a few early figures or heads. In the still life etchings the same objects appear again and again in seemingly endlessly varied combinations: bottles, jugs, plates, bowls, tin boxes, lamps with the occasional bunch of flowers – all displayed on a table top or bench. The landscapes show suburban Bologna and its environs, rather scruffy and un-picturesque, or a hillside and farmhouse, perhaps distant mountains, in the countryside. These are the objects Morandi lived with, the places he lived in or visited on holidays. They are ordinary, but his vision, and the art that he creates from these objects and places, is extraordinary.  As fellow Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico said in 1922 Morandi’s art deals with “the metaphysics of the most commonplace objects”.

Morandi: Still life with five objects 1956

Morandi is one of the great obsessives of twentieth century art. Like Braque, Bonnard, Giacometti (or Cezanne in the previous century), he worked away at the same subjects over again and over throughout his life, seemingly struggling to achieve small gains, small changes – to achieve something that seemed to elude them. They are not the great inventors like Picasso or Matisse, but they are artists who kept on looking and creating, finding a rich variety in an apparently limited range of subjects.  In these etchings Morandi also pushes technique to its limits, wresting from lines, scratches and crosshatching on the etching plate a new image from every group of objects, clustered together or strung out in frieze like lines, or the corner of a garden, an “ordinary” everyday view. He seems to be seeing these things anew each time, seeing things we rarely notice because they are so obvious, so familiar and thus overlooked, as if for the first time and recreating that seeing through lines and subtle variations of black, grey and white. It’s about time and timelessness, the slow passage of light across a room, a table top, a hillside – caught at one moment but going on, it seems, forever.  However Morandi’s style is not impressionistic . The structure of the prints is based on what De Chirico called “The eternal laws of geometric design” In this perhaps he’s like Cezanne, whose paintings are built on the elemental forms he found in Nature.

Like Cezanne too, Morandi makes a virtue of his clumsiness. His crosshatchings never give the illusion of real shadow but the way they define space, solidity, light, recreates the bottle, vase, apple, shell there on the blank page. Like Cezanne he’s a great experimenter, working on a limited range of subjects, labouring away in the provinces, unfashionable, belonging to no movement or group (after a brief flirtation with Futurism) sticking to his task: repetition and experiment, looking, drawing, painting, etching.  De Chirico said: “ through his slow but sure labours.. [Morandi} seeks to create everything alone.”  We see the actual objects from his works in the Morandi Museum in Bologna, a film of which plays in one room of the exhibition: the striped vase, the wine bottles, the fruit plate, the long necked lamp, the artificial flowers ( which we thought were real flowers!). In the museum they are literal, dull, flat, ordinary. everyday. In the prints and paintings they are magically transformed. We seem to see them as if for the first time.  Sometimes the things are barely there – a few lines, blank paper, an outline, a shadow serve to define an object. “Minimalist”, they might be called, but they are always attempting to describe the world we know, not the world of art. Sometimes the objects or landscapes struggle to emerge from the darkness of crosshatching, blurred and blotted. But fragments of the world do emerge: the corner of a garden, a few pots. Why hadn’t we noticed them before? Or a hillside, a shuttered house some trees, heat-stunned in the summer afternoon sun of Emilia Romagna. A path winding through bushes. Morandi makes us notice things.  De Chirico said: “a fatal melancholy .. sharpens our vision of the world.” In this case it’s not fatal but full of life.


Posted by author: David Knapp

8 thoughts on “The Melancholy of Objects

  • David draws attention to this excellent show of Morandi’s work.Although mostly of etchings, there are also drawings and watercolours and one beautiful oil painting. Just when you think that no more can be said, Morandi, in the last eight years of his life turns, like Cezanne or Turner before to a more abstract use of watercolour. There are only four on display and you can see Morandi trying to distil all his experience into these mere traces of pigment suspended in water.
    Drawing, painting and printmaking continues to hold a fascination and it seems to be surviving against the odds. De Chirico wrote of Morandi ” …Today, the confusion which oppresses the arts is enormous…there is an abundance of foolishness, much lack of understanding, a great deal of banality and cheap sensuality – and as for the spirit, one searches for it in vain.”
    At the Estorick Collection until 7th of April 2013, Morandi ‘s etchings, drawings and watercolours will provide just such a refuge.

  • Thanks, Jim, for mentioning the watercolours. They are extraordinary, as you say, and remind one of Turner’s watercolours – the ability to create an object or a landscape with a few brushstrokes. In fact I think there are some in the Estorick’s own collection, as well as some great drawings and etchings which are usually on display in an upstairs room. Well worth people going to have a look, even when this exhibition is over.

  • David’s interesting article on Morandi makes it sound like must-see exhibition.The Estorick Collection sounds like a great place to see and is now on my list of priorities for a London visit.

    • Yes, Rotraut, it’s well worth a visit and if you have time while in London you could compare his approach to Still Life with the wonderful Cezanne Still Lifes at the Courtauld Gallery.
      And perhaps you could also compare his watercolour technique with the Turner watercolours at Tat Britain.

  • “A shuttered house, some trees, heat stunned in the Summer afternoon sun” ….beautifully written David. Thanks for sharing your impressions. A pity I can’t visit the show, but your write-up is a good second.
    Thanks Jim for de Chirico’s quote, which is applicable even today.

  • I went to see this exhibition last week – and am so glad I went! I’d only seen Morandi’s work before in reproduction, and as always, seeing originals makes you realise what a big difference there is between the two. I’ve been studying printmaking, so seeing so many of his etchings, and seeing the development over time, was a real treat. I only wish there had also been more drawings and paintings – but they can’t show everything at once, and they said there had been other exhibitions of his work in recent years there. So I hope in time I’ll be going back to the Estorick. And what a lovely gallery and gallery staff! People who’d already been there made comments about that, and now I understand why.

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