TITLE OF SHOW
Giorgio Morandi:
Paintings, 1950-1964
Lucas Schoormans Gallery
508 West 26th Street, Suite 11B
212 243 3159
through December 4, 2004
By JOE
FYFE
Giorgio Morandi Still Life 1955
oil on canvas
There are six paintings,
one pencil drawing and one watercolor and pencil drawing in this exhibition
of works from the last fifteen years of Giorgio Morandi’s life.
In Natura Morta, ( most are titled this) 1955 [V944, refer to this #
for reproduction] one notices a slight crookedness on the right side
of the stretcher. The canvas is stretched over some old, uneven wood
with a slight chasm in between it and the edge of the frame of the painting.
This might not mean so much in another painter’s work, but one’s
observing consciousness always heightens when looking at Morandi.
The surface of
the painting is made up of a continuous brushy energy of modulated oil
paint. It takes equal possession of the solidity of the objects depicted
as it does of the air surrounding the objects and of the waveringly
tentative light and shadow. This same work has a sensually bumpy bottle
at the center of the composition, with the bottles neck at the horizon
line. On either side of the central object are boxes, a horizontal one
in a peach color with a dove gray box above it and then on the other
side a vertical box in a creamy pale yellow.
All of the objects
seem to blend and calmly pulsate in this closed, timeless world. But
as one walks around the room, the paintings slowly seem to become reachable
and very human. The colors, amid the measured warmth or coolness of
the grays, possess a curious audacity. This combines with the odd elegance
of the arrangements of objects, how they tuck in around one another,
behind their proscenium in their shallow spaces and shadows.
Morandi is continually
rich in metaphor. From still life, his works travel backwards toward
some ancient architecture, then move to the present, where they display
a sense of stagecraft. They are equally personal and monumental, surreal
and bluntly candid. In fact, we gain most from seeing these infinitely
quiet little dramas as still contemporary, anticipating the kind of
genre-busting that contemporary art displays regularly. To cite one
influence, the late Aldo Rossi, the Italian architect, arranged his
buildings with Morandi’s bottles in mind.
Near the office
of the gallery is one of his last paintings, three white objects on
a gray ground. A dark red shape, the color of dried blood, hovers behind
them. The foreground objects are white, blending from the color of chalk
to that of bone. Natura Morta, indeed.
