I just fell in love with the work of a Bolognese artist, Giorgio Morandi (born in Bologna in 1890). I'd never heard of him before, but went to check it out because my friend Josh insisted we see it (Josh comes every year for the Restored-Film Festival and so knows the City quite well).
It's free, so that was the first plus, and it's in an old palace with gently sloping stairs and a tall ceiling telling me the palace inhabitants didn't get off their horses until they were at the door of their chambers- worth it just for this so far. The first room has Morandi's early still lifes, from the 20's through the 30's. There is a studied akwardness to the arrangement of the objects, as though he is searching for some interesting relationship between them. Great, I like him.
And then I came to Natura Morta (still life) from 1948, where Morandi lines up the tops of all the objects in perspective, so his arrangement of things starts seeming like one thing. Very cool, and I really enjoy the work in this room.
Natura Morta 1957, the spaces between the objects starts to disappear. He has arranged them such that their lines are continuous, one piece melds into the next. You know there's space between them, but the objects read as though they've been compressed, your brain switches back and forth from seeing objects, to seeing a composition.
And by the 60's Morandi has reduced these compositions of objects into solid/void studies. I copied a drawing he does of an urn that clearly has two objects in front of it, but instead of drawing all the objects, he just draws the urn missing two chunks (see my copy of his drawing at right). Brilliant. He died two years later, and I wonder if it's because he was finally satisfied with the arrangement of the objects.
It's free, so that was the first plus, and it's in an old palace with gently sloping stairs and a tall ceiling telling me the palace inhabitants didn't get off their horses until they were at the door of their chambers- worth it just for this so far. The first room has Morandi's early still lifes, from the 20's through the 30's. There is a studied akwardness to the arrangement of the objects, as though he is searching for some interesting relationship between them. Great, I like him.
And then I came to Natura Morta (still life) from 1948, where Morandi lines up the tops of all the objects in perspective, so his arrangement of things starts seeming like one thing. Very cool, and I really enjoy the work in this room.
Natura Morta 1957, the spaces between the objects starts to disappear. He has arranged them such that their lines are continuous, one piece melds into the next. You know there's space between them, but the objects read as though they've been compressed, your brain switches back and forth from seeing objects, to seeing a composition.
And by the 60's Morandi has reduced these compositions of objects into solid/void studies. I copied a drawing he does of an urn that clearly has two objects in front of it, but instead of drawing all the objects, he just draws the urn missing two chunks (see my copy of his drawing at right). Brilliant. He died two years later, and I wonder if it's because he was finally satisfied with the arrangement of the objects.
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