Seeing the Ordinary
Giorgio Morandi discovered new ways of seeing beauty through exploring endless nuances in tone. He chose ordinary objects like bottles, vases, and tins, often bought second hand, as the subject of his work. He arranged and rearranged them constantly in order to find a seemingly infinite variety of compositions. His paintings don’t drift off into the sentimental. They don’t rework nostalgic moments, invoke childhood memories, or awaken romantic passions. Instead, his paintings focus intently on ordinary objects as if he were seeing them for the first time.
His work contrasts with some of the more popular movements of the early twentieth century such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism. Cubism radically altered the viewing plane of an object through fractured perspective, Fauvism applied saturated colors with bold strokes, and Surrealism plumbed the depths of the unconscious. These avant-garde movements broke with the traditions of realism in order to explore new territory. And while French, German, and Spanish painters grabbed the attention of the world through their sensational work, Morandi, an Italian painter, worked diligently with subtlety and nuance to produce his images.
For hundreds of years, still life paintings traditionally depicted an object like a skull, a vase of flowers, or a platter of fruit against a dark background. The darkness caused the background to recede so that the foreground would come into focus. Van Gogh introduced blue and yellow backgrounds into his paintings of sunflowers. Cézanne experimented with line and color to re-envision the nature of still life paintings. These breaks with convention created new ways of seeing familiar subjects.
Morandi chose to transform mundane subjects into an experience of nearly endless possibilities. The vases and bottles in his paintings are more humble than the brilliant sunflowers in Van Gogh’s work and are less inviting than the apples and pears in Cézanne’s. Morandi avoided objects that would naturally call attention to themselves. The simplicity of the object allows us to focus on the effects of light rather than on the significance of the object. In the later paintings, a soft light immerses the objects and creates an almost boundless feeling of space. The images feel both expansive and intimate.
[This blog post is an exerpt. You can read the rest of the essay in the book Edible Thistles.]
Additional Resources
Morandi’s paintings at WikiArt: https://www.wikiart.org/en/giorgio-morandi
Morandi Museum in Bologna, Italy: http://www.mambo-bologna.org/en/museomorandi/
Morandi’s home in Bologna, Italy: https://www.bolognawelcome.com/en/places/museums-and-art-galleries/casa-morandi-en