Artblog.net

1.

Hovig John Heghinian

July 21, 2003, 2:24 PM

I think I’m going to get in trouble, but let me post some questioning comments.... How is Morandi’s work distinct from other similar work? How is it different from the indistinct and almost monochromatic work which often hangs forgettably on the walls of the types of homes displayed in Architectural Digest? Are there other artists whose work is similar, but either inferior to Morandi’s, or derivative of it, or which demonstrates Morandi’s works’ excellence in some other way? A comparison and contrast would be illuminating. I’m trying with every ounce of energy to remain open-minded, and I truly look forward to learning more about this artist, but the works on the Museo Morandi’s website seem to actually drain me of energy. I see the huddled subject in the middle of a sterile empty space, and I see no interaction between the subject and the background, no interplay, no suggestions of life whatsoever. On the other hand, I don’t see an abnegation (of life) either. Nor do I see calmness or peace. I see nothingness, neglect. In fact, I see fear. I see frightened beings huddling under a blanket. Or, I see a short-sighted beings whose vision extends no further than the nose. I don’t see life, still or otherwise. Worst, I don’t find any interest. Please, forgive me if I’m rubbing anyone the wrong way, since it seems Morandi has more than his share of fans, but I’m struggling to understand his work, and this is what I currently see. At the current time, I dare say his work only gives me a greater appreciation of Malevich’s Black Square.

2.

Jack

July 21, 2003, 3:52 PM

The following two paragraphs are lifted verbatim from Terry Teachout’s blog (which, by the way, I highly recommend): What makes Giorgio Morandi⤁s paintings so special? To begin with, most people don⤁t seem to find them so. Though Morandi is renowned in his native Italy, he is unknown in this country save to critics, collectors, and connoisseurs. It⤁s easy to see why. His art is too quiet and unshowy, too determinedly unfashionable, to draw crowds. It creates its own silence. ”Curiously, these deceptively modest paintings, drawings, and prints seem to elicit only two responses: extreme enthusiasm or near-indifference. And yet, this is not surprising, since Morandi⤁s art makes no effort to be ingratiating or to put itself forward in any way.For anyone who pays attention, the microcosm of Morandi⤁s tabletop world becomes vast, the space between objects immense, pregnant, and expressive.” That quote is from Karen Wilkin⤁s Giorgio Morandi. Wilkin is one of America⤁s finest art critics (as well as a damned good freelance curator), and her profusely illustrated monograph makes the case for Morandi far better than I could ever hope to do. ...................................................................... Beyond noting that even the best reproductions are never, ever the same as the real thing, I can only really add that at Art Basel-Miami Beach last November, I saw a Morandi that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was one of the finest things there, which is saying something, and I saw everything in every booth.

3.

Hovig John Heghinian

July 21, 2003, 4:34 PM

Jack, Thanks for the reply. I read Teachout’s reaction when he published it, but I found it unilluminating, which is why I’m turning to this public forum. I’m amazed that no one can seem to explain the charm. If someone could show a Morandi-like piece which does not produce a Morandi-like reaction (and is thus similar but inferior), it might help. Or maybe it’s just a matter of time. On the other hand, maybe I need to see an example in person, but why is it so special in the first place? Is it the scale of the work? It seems small, 50cm on a side or less. Is it the technique? The brush patterns and painted shapes don’t seem unusual. Does it have some sort of pleasant manner of impasto? The canvases seem relatively flat. Do the minerals in the paint catch the light in a special way, like the paints of the masters did? Are the shapes of the objects themselves interesting? Does the composition itself arrest the eye? You guys are all art teachers, artists, gallerists and reviewers. You must see something I don’t.

4.

franklin

July 21, 2003, 6:33 PM

Hovig - <i>If someone could show a Morandi-like piece which does not produce a Morandi-like reaction (and is thus similar but inferior), it might help.</i> Try <a href="http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/de_stael/de_stael_the_shelf.jpg.html">this</a>. <i>Is it the scale of the work? Is it the technique? Does it have some sort of pleasant manner of impasto? Do the minerals in the paint catch the light in a special way, like the paints of the masters did? Are the shapes of the objects themselves interesting?</i> Um, no. <i>Does the composition itself arrest the eye?</i> Yes. Why, I⤁m not sure. Even though the objects tend to be loaded up in the center, they are able to mobilize the background in a convincing way.

5.

Jack

July 21, 2003, 6:35 PM

Hovig, The images available via Teachout’s piece are only suitable as ”quick and dirty” approximations for those who know that’s all they are, and can thus make the necessary mental adjustments based on having seen the real thing. In other words, you have to see Morandi ”in the flesh” (or at least in truly first-rate reproductions), though he may still not be for you. We’re definitely not talking Renoir or Monet here. Morandi has been called a painter’s painter, and it’s no surprise that Cezanne was his chief role model. For me, part of his appeal is precisely the handling of paint per se, understated yet masterly, because he wasn’t about making an effect, but simply PAINTED in a very pure way that was obviously natural to him. There is also the subtle interplay of tones and colors, the intimacy and quietness of the pictures (reminiscent of Chardin, but more focused on formal values, and thus more abstract and less immediate), and, perhaps most importantly, an indefinable air or mood that Karen Wilkin alludes to, which is a kind of visual poetry. Some artists obviously speak to more people than others. Morandi does not have mass appeal, and probably never will have, because his work appears too limited in range, too reserved, too rarefied. It is particularly satisfying to those who appreciate formal values for their own sake, but that’s not what a lot of people want or need from art. It all depends on personal response.

6.

DEVIL-ASS

July 22, 2003, 8:21 AM

I have never been a huge fan of Morandi. I have seen many of his paintings, the best at the Venice Gug. I find their naiveete annoying and thank satan they are not any larger... Far be it from me to be a negative voice, but come on, who was Morandi sleeping with?

7.

Hovig John Heghinian

July 22, 2003, 9:17 AM

Thanks to all. I’ll keep an open mind, and use the links and comments above to do some comparisons on my own.

8.

Hovig John Heghinian

July 22, 2003, 9:34 AM

Does <a href=\"http://search.sothebys.com/jsps/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=3VLKC\">this description</a> help? (From a Sotheby’s auction, Oct 2002.)

9.

Jack

July 22, 2003, 4:33 PM

Yes, Hovig, it does, as it emphasizes Morandi’s great concern for formal values, e.g., color, shapes, texture, space, compositional relationships, light, shadow. It’s a primarily aesthetic approach, which has little or nothing to do with subject matter, narrative, or message. The bottles and other objects used are just convenient, handy props that could be manipulated at will—they’re not important or significant in and of themselves, but rather in the way they are deployed in relation to each other, the background, and the light (or ambiance). It’s as if Morandi painted more for himself than for an audience, as if his work was really a personal exploration and not an attempt to please potential customers.

10.

Hovig John Heghinian

July 22, 2003, 7:07 PM

”Abstract Formalism.” :-)

11.

Mark Butterworth

July 24, 2003, 1:26 AM

I’m the guy who raised the questions at Terry’s blog of Da Vinci Vs. Morandi. Granted that not viewing the actual picture is a disadvantage, I cannot help but think from what many have said here that what makes MOrandi interesting to some is an apparent nihilism in his manner. Some call his work peaceful and silent, implying a sense of spiritual contemplation that his work inspires. I can see how someone might experience it that way - see it as a western form of oriental art that puts actionless beingness on different and staggerred levels of a panel. Paintings where nothing happens to point elsewhere but simply takes up all of the present with one group in a teahouse, another group on a river boat, and another group on clouds. Some may make that case for Morandi, but I won’t, since Da Vinci’s backgrounds generally equal the best oriental work in the same way. So Da Vinci incorporates a spiritual, contemplative dimension right from the start, and then infuses it with the most extraordinary of all creatures - human beings! HUman beings whose reality seems greater, more evocative and affecting than other people who may be looking at the picture with you. People by Leonardo seem more real than the viewer seems to himself in many respects. That anyone would simply call Da Vinci a good draughtsmen is mind boggling. HIs skill at execution is merely a chariot for his genuis to paraphrase Blake. Andrew Wyeth is just as good a draughtsman as Da Vinci, but we don’t get out of him what we get from Leo. So much talk about Morandi seems to devolve into a matter of concept. His work embodies a particular concept and thus excites those who can ”get” the concept of it. For myself, I despise conceptualism. The vox populi of the ages matter more to me. Accessibility is essential, too. Everyone responds to Beauty right away. They don’t have to think about it or worry it like a dog with a bone. Children understand the beautiful, it seems, much more than so many critics or afficianados (sp?). Without human scale in all things, art is distorted and distorts. Distortion may seem interesting for its novelty, fashionability, cleverness, concept and so on, but it can never really satisfy the soul in a child or an adult. Rather, it is that people who have been distorted by life will tend to be drawn to distortions that mirror their character and personality. Hence, the diversity of responses to art.

12.

franklin

July 24, 2003, 6:20 AM

Mark, thanks for stopping by. When I called Leonardo a superb draughtsman, I didn’t mean <i>only</i> a superb draughtsman; he was perfect in every artistic respect. (Except in his ability to finish paintings, it seems.) I disagree that Wyeth draws as well as him, which is <i>one</i> of the reasons we don’t get out of him what we get out of Leo. I teach a traditional painting methods class at school, and I tell my students that the majority of what we admire about old master paintings is the drawing. Things are well-drawn at the base layer, and the handling of the paint is superb largely because it is used to form shape. Nevertheless I get a lot of pleasure out of looking at Wyeth. (We were just looking at him the other day in class, since we start with egg tempera.) Also Paul Cadmus - no Leonardo, or more specifically, no Mantegna, but great. I feel the same way about Morandi - no Leonardo, or more appropriately, no Monet, but wonderful. My enjoyment of Morandi is not conceptual. I’m allergic to that kind of attitude. I respond to his silent, reduced aesthetic. I find reticent power in them. I’m not sure what you mean by human scale, I think. I find Morandi’s work perfectly scaled to the human. He doesn’t paint sweeping vistas or churning scenes of mayhem, like Poussin did. He starts with the assumption that just to watch the light fall in through the window on some objects - in short, just to exist - is the stuff of art. He makes me feel that through his work.

13.

Jack

July 24, 2003, 8:53 AM

Each artist has a different character, different strengths and weaknesses, different things to offer. We all can and should have our own taste and make our own judgments, but it seems quite unreasonable to set up one artist as supreme and declare any artist judged lesser to be unworthy of attention. The idea of pitting artists against each other to see who ”wins,” and then condemning the ”loser” to a kind of banishment, makes no sense to me. We only cheat ourselves by doing so. The point is not so much whether X is better than Y, but rather what do X and Y have to offer individually, and then appreciating the merit of each in its own right. Art is not a cockfight; it’s supposed to be a banquet.

14.

Mark Butterworth

July 25, 2003, 1:07 AM

Jack and Franklin, Jack is right to say that different artists deserve to be judged on their own merits or faults, and that comparisons are odious. There really are apples and oranges. My judgement of Morandi remains provisional simply because I have not seen his work in person, or in a good reproduction; so I am making an educated guess based on what I’ve seen on the web, and how others have responded to him. My standard of judgement is not that other artists must paint exactly like Leonardo to be considered great, but that their work demand and provoke the kind of response that only the best and greatest works create. There are many oriental works which I would put on par with Leo’s. I admire Wyeth’s skill very much, but I find that his underlying pessimism and gloom deters me from wanting to gaze on his work repeatedly. For one of the greatest of criteria for judgement has to do with whether any work of art can bear repetition. But people’s tastes change over a lifetime, so what I am always on the lookout for are those works which our opinions will not change - in fact, cannot change because the art has a kind of eternal shelf life for the auditing soul. I’ve had a continuing exchange with Terry Teachout on the matter of criticism, but unfortunately he has made only ad hominem remarks rather than engage my simple questions seriously. It simply is not enough for a critic to conclude with a shrug that it all comes down to a matter of taste - because as I said, tastes can change, but are there some eternal verities that remain, and may always be applied to art (as well as morality)? Regarding ”human scale”, I have noticed that in all the great self-consciously created works of art (I consider folk art to be unself-consciously made) that endure, man and his condition, his scale, is the measure of all things. We identify most with that which is most like us. That includes size and perspective. None of us would take much pleasure in a sculpture garden in which all the statues or works were titanic and dwarfed us, no matter how beautifully executed the works might be. The lack of scale to us would diminish our appreciation dramatically. The Statue of Liberty is best seen from a distance. The same with many memorial works which are large but placed in a way to have distance from us. The same is true with literature and painting. Life must be reduced to our own scale if it is going to be effective. Morandi’s still lifes can certainly do that in their size, but do they distort ordinary human reality and perception in order to create a tangential emphasis? I think they do. It is not that I demand photorealism. Da Vinci and other masters are not so. Nor is Van Gogh, of course. But when an artist seriously distorts nature, the effect he intends to create by doing so had better find its way into transcendence or else it is simply a parody of sorts. Michaelangelo is a good example of this. He distorts figures in his Sistine chapel paintings and in his sculptures. His Madonna in the Pieta is much bigger than Christ. His David has very large hands. He gains power and tremendous energy from such distortions, yet I always cringe when I notice some of his females who appear to be weightlifters with breasts. My contention is that distortion ultimately fails despite all its strengths or power to focus energy. Distortion creates visceral, emotional responses. Our response to art should not be driven by the engine of human emotion, but appeal even more so to our reason or soul. The Golden Mean. Simply because art can create a strong emotional response in the auditor does not confer value on the work. A child screaming in our ears creates a strong response, too, but we consider the cessation of the provocation and the lessening of our feelings to be much more welcome a reality. Terry insists to me that he has reached an opposite judgement from mine based on the same means of criticism. That we are both using the same aesthetic but coming to different conclusions. I severely disagree. I believe that we are worlds apart in perspective and criteria. I am certain that I have a much stricter rationale than he and many others apply. To put it simply, I have a very narrow range of approval. Art must either be perfect in the highest degree or perfect in the lowest degree (folk art). An example would be Bach (Mass in B minor say) on one end of the human scale and O Waly, Waly (a simple folk melody) on the other end. Anything in between may have its beauties here and there but must fail overall to completely satisfy the human being. And if it fails in any degree, it disappoints; in much the same way that we lose respect for a saint if he maintains a single vice.

15.

Mark Butterworth

July 25, 2003, 2:04 AM

One other quick point I’d like to make is that I don’t think great works of art should provoke much debate (critical thought, yes, but not acrimonious debate). Their efficacy should be readily apparent in their own time and later. They should not have a novelty which is provocative so much as having an insinuating power that any child or non-intellectual person is captured by. Greeks didn’t debate whether Homer was great or not, but later examined his beauties or flaws. Shakespeare’s reception in his own time was popular, and remained so afterward. Dante was highly regarded as were the Renaissance masters. It seems that only as we enter the 19 century criticism becomes diffused and variegated with personalities becoming authoritative, doubts about nature and reality confusing the educated and thoughtful, and controversy driving the interest for art. Process became romanticized. It also seems that the 20th century, artists in their frustration simply put a gun to their heads, and blew their brains out and called it modernism. People were misled into believing that there was such a things as ”progress” in art. Let me take Van Gogh as a instance. Few would doubt the extreme emotional power of his paintings. They simply stop you in your tracks and bowl you over with their emotional energy, and sudden shift of reality to peak experience. Like seeing Yosemite the first time, or walking into a great Gothic cathedral. You are simply thrown out of yourself (in a way) by his work. But no one can live in a Gothic cathedral. It simply exhausts the soul. You stop responding because all your emotion is spent, and it pretty much stays spent. In the same way, no one can listen to Handel’s Messiah every day. But with Da Vinci and Bach, those are works you can live with everyday, which never exhaust one’s emotions or reason because they have a balance, a harmony which is perfect. It is only when we are disturbed in emotion that we reject the best because they do not speak to our state which is removed from the Mean itself. Some say Morandi has this effect. Maybe so, I can’t judge so well from what I’ve seen. His stillness may very well be satisfying, but my experience tells me (and that of others) that Beauty enchants, and it does so immediately for nearly all people. People have recorded experiences where Western music with its harmonies completely charmed and entranced peoples who had never encountered it before in the Americas (for example). It is not that Beauty is devoid of emotion, but that the emotion is of the highest kind (love) balanced with reason (truth), animated by soul (spirit). That’s my catechism anyway.

16.

franklin

July 27, 2003, 12:55 PM

As someone whose <a href=\"http://www.einspruch.com/pages/art/gallery00.php/\">work</a> relies heavily on distortion, I’m not ready to give it up as being too viscerally stimulating to live with. (Although it would explain why my work isn’t running out the door into people’s living rooms.) I’m thinking of Sengai and Torei, whose work looks almost broken at times but has a friendly liveliness. I agree that I wouldn’t want to spend too much time around El Greco for this very reason. I don’t know if beauty always bites everyone immediately. I remember guitarist Robert Fripp describing the first gamelan performance he witnessed in person; he said that people were bobbing their heads to the music in a manner that was impossible to match to what was going on.