Seeing the Ordinary
by Joshua Wait
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.
It’s a challenge to be highly attuned to one’s own personal experience and then find a way to express that experience to another person. One approach is to use symbols to mediate between the artist and the viewer. Frida Kahlo represented her personal experience of reality through symbols like a deer being shot through with arrows. The symbolic language of the image communicates her painful psychological reality. During the 17th century, Dutch artists used still life paintings to symbolize religious or moral meaning. For example, the objects in the Vanitas still life by Jacques de Gheyn represent human vanity in the face of death.
Morandi stated that the objects in his still life paintings have no symbolic meaning. The paintings depict ordinary sensory experience. Each still life object represents itself and the painting insists on the value of seeing the ordinary. It is a focus on experiencing the subject without projecting another meaning onto it. That doesn’t mean that the paintings are without feeling or emotion. Morandi said, “I am essentially a painter of the kind of still-life composition that communicates a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else” (Wilkin, 144). He intends his paintings to express calm and tranquility.
Morandi taught etching as a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna. During his artistic career, he made more than a hundred etchings and a thousand paintings. His etchings share qualities with his paintings. The subjects are either a still life or a landscape. In the work Natura morta con il lume bianco a sinistra he engraved thousands of lines to capture the subtle effects of light and shadow on the objects. In his autobiography, Morandi said, “I perceived how much sincerity and simplicity there was in the works by the old masters, who constantly drew their inspiration from reality, and that the profound poetic charm of their works emerged from this reality” (Wilkin, 133). And by reality, he means the observable reality, the image created in the mind through ordinary sensory perception.
Morandi’s artwork feels like it embraces a kind of hermeticism. Hermeticism isn’t necessarily a sealing of oneself off from the world, though it is a separation from it. It is the preservation of a feeling and a space within one’s self for artistic expression. It allows for the integrity of one’s own experience without getting caught up in the priorities of other people. Hermeticism can be an antidote for the pressures of other people’s expectations, for the advertising constantly demanding our attention, for the dogma of the current moment, and even for the propaganda of war. And in that regard, it’s a kind of spiritual practice. It’s not a how to list. It isn’t a self-help technique. It’s an appreciation for the simplicity being.
When I visited Casa Morandi and Museo Morandi in Bologna, I had the good fortune of staying at an apartment that overlooked the roofs of the city. Each morning, I sat on the couch and waited for the sunrise. First a single bird would start singing, then two, then several all at once. I watched the dark blue landscape slowly transform into a rich palette of colors. The sun lit the gold colored buildings, the red tiles, the green hills, and the blue sky. Then eventually, I heard church bells. As I watched the morning arrive, a feeling of calm and tranquility came over me like being inside a Morandi painting. And when I saw the former studio of Giorgio Morandi, I felt humbled. It’s easy to forget how simply some of the masters lived. And it makes me think that living more simply may offer more contentment.
In the twenty-first century, sensational and intense experiences come at us constantly through the news, online streaming, and social media. Slowing down to look at an ordinary object can feel like a waste of time when so many other brightly saturated and sensational images seem more worthy of our attention. However, taking the time to experience a kind of intimacy with ordinary, muted, and subtle artwork is a kind of bewildering pleasure. It allows the mind to pass through the constant stimulation to see the ordinary and find a moment of calm.
[This essay originally appeared in 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
Joshua Wait is a writer and an artist. He founded Blue Rivers to provide a space for poetry, art, and photography. He is the author of multiple books.
