Morandi's Legacy: Influences on British Art

MORA

DI'S LEGACY Influences on ritish Art

Paul Coldwell

Es t o rick C o ll ec ti o n o f M o d e r n It ali an A rt Philip Wi l son Pu b li shers

Acknowledge me nts

Published on th e OC(',lt"" h" r Le Brun 20()(, . ,\Ii r h;"l< n ·, ,· r ved, DA CS; p. i7

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Morandi's work.

For over thirty years Cragg has evolved a sophisticated

Cragg's studio complex, purpose built on an industrial

sculptural vocabulary from man-mad e objects, beginning

estate in Wuppertal, is a combination of factory and

with plastic flotsam left high and dry on the beach, which

laboratory. While Morandi surrounded himself with found

he gathered and used to form mosaics of anything from police in riot gear to the British Isles tilted to be viewed from the north, onto a concerted engagement with the manufactured object as container. Many of these objects, like the plastic milk bottle , are so ubiquitous that they have bel'Ome invisibl e until Cragg re-presents them as carriers of new meaning. It is inevitable that comparisons are drawn with Morandi's family of forms, his jugs and bottles. Cragg observes: Fig 8. Tony Craggs studiO. W uppertai. Gelmany

'vVe surround ourselves with objects, human beings extend themselves with materials and with that they make objects in an evolutionary, in an exi stential necessity so we feel better with clothes on, sitting on a sofa, in a room, in a building, in a street, and all this is material which we have secreted outwardly

~ ec ause

we

survive better like that. It's an existential strategy if you like. So that provides a reality of useful objects. Now, that utilitarian appearance of the world that we know when we are sitting in rooms, or whe n we're walking

24

Fia 9 , Tony Cragg's studio, W upperloi, G ermany

THE

STUDIO AS A LABORATORY OF THOUGHT

identity, they surrender themselves to the comfort and security of being a group, As Cragg states:

More than photographs , I find them more so, I find the vessels take on the character of my neighbour, my brother, my sister, my aunt. Here we are with these relationships, these groups of friends, who we keep m eeting in the same spaces, Fig 10, Reconslluclion

of Morandi's sludio, Vic Fondozzo , Bologna,

Museo MOlOndi, Soloono

Morandi's bottles are lined up for inspection; there is an order to the arrangement, light, dark, light, dark, light.

objects Cragg manufactures them, scaling them up so that

The almost equal intervals across the surface present a

Clcn the most banal become invested with a new grand eur,

formal austerity, only softened by the modulati on of tones

Shelves of ex periments and works in progress testify to a

and the resistance of the objects (each bottle is quite

Iluidi ty of visual thought, and everywhere mater ial is in the

different) to conform completely. Overriding it all is a

process of being transformed, Cragg maintains:

pictorial structure that keys every incident to its place within the canvas, with even the signature functioning as

I am not a conceptual artist. Morandi didn't even know

an active clement within the composition,

what one was, [ like to have a lot o f material around

Cragg's work has been epitomised by hi s concerns with

me, If I'm sitting on the so fa, my work is the last thing

making scu lptures fr om groups of objects, where

I'm capable of doing, I can only work by beginning to

independ ent clem ents become locked into a new totality,

push things arou nd and looking at certain things and

These sculptures ar ti culate, amo ngst other things, an

manipulating them, You are absolutel y right in that

understanding of molecular systems, endorSing the idea of

sense in that you will see she Ives of boxes full of stuff

interdepend ence and mutual compatibility, Early Forms

that I have been car ting around for the last twe nty-fi ve

(1993) (p, 59) is on e of a series of sculptures where he

~l'ars,

So I do necd this stuff around and it 's a big check

presents what appears to be a gro up o f objects that have

on your life when you return to an object and you see

been physically mor phed into one single new form, The

it another two years later. These are specific markers

viewer is aware that this object is a composite, an industrial

and you measure yo ur life on these experiences of

hybrid, and a form new to the world, detached from

meeting them aga in,

practical function, The piece ho ld s in ten sion two propositions: firstl y, that an internal form has created the

~I()randi,

too,

con tin uall y retu rns t o his objects,

external profil e, and secondly, that the interior space is a

reconfigured each tim e, as a new set of visual problems, In

consequen ce of external imperatives, The lip, delineating

his painting of 1962, Still Life (p, 58), Morandi presents the

inside from o ut, also acts as a drawn element to take the

bottles arranged as if they form a family group waiting to

eye on a journey of ex ploration, the speed of the line in

be photog,-aphed; there is a formal presentation' to the eye

contrast to the slow languishing forms . In thi s case Cragg

which one scans across, While retaining their individual

uses bronze as a unifying surface. Througho ut his oeuvre,

2S

THE

STUDIO AS A LABORATORY OF THOUGHT

surface has been the subject of myriad propositions, from

before he selected them, Likewise Cragg, in sandblasting

freely drawn crayon lines on wood, such as Echo (1984),

these glass vessl'is, strips them of any detail, leaves them as

through to surfaces composed of thousands of plastic dice

pure shapes and even removes from them that most valued

such as Secretions (1998), now in the collection of Deutsche

quality of glass, its transparency, In Cumulus he stacks

Bank London.

scores of these sandblasted vcsscls, making a singk opaque

In thl' 1990s Cragg made a number of pi ec('s using sandblasted glass, These works, which refer back to the

glowing form, each clement surrendering its individual autonomy to the whole:

early flotsam pi eces in the manner in which the surfaCl's are eroded, offer a further parallel with Morandi, Morandi

If you're talking about the gIJss works, which are

was not content to let his objects reprcscnt themsl'hl's as

blasted, it's a different kind of energy - a morbidity

they had in their previous existence; he concealed their

that engenders a very particular light, and it makes the

identities, painting them prior to the painting itself, and

glass have more of a body. If I make a large volume of

allowed dust to gather, gradually disguising the detail that

glass that is sandblasted and a large body of glass that

might have IC)l'ated tlwsc objects specifically in the world

isn't, the one that's not sandblasted is almost four times heavier. It seems quite obvious to say but somehow your eye just goes through it because you don't scc anything so you add more and more material. It's a kind of Duchampian strategy, which also starts with the ceramic object [Unnal] if you like, This offered a kind of shock to a bourgeois society and we know how that's developed over the last 100 years as a major strategy for getting things which belong to the non-art world, through a change of context, into the art world, And so we may have the feeling now as we go into the twenty­ first century that that strategy is running out of stl'am, But at the same time Morandi stands at exactly the same point, he dOl'S look at nature, and he does look at the figure, but very rarely, but he's looking at man­ made consciousness already, he's looking at things that are already made by man, There is passivity in tho se pictures, and a will to almost autistically concentrate on his problem and ignore everything else, And to solve what one can in the problem one sets oneself, and it's important for what it cuts out; we're talking about what's in the picture, you have think about what he's cut out of the

Fig. 11 Tony Cragg, Cumulus. 1995,

glo ~s,

265 x 120 x 120. Tol e

picture , J7

THE LANGUAGE OF LINE

THE LANGUAGE OF L N

planned (The Rake's Pro8ress has a quality of spontaneity and impulse), and sl'condly, more grounded. This is evident in th e manner that cross-hatching is used expressively, often in conju_nction with areas of aquatint. Cross-hatching essentially was a way of rendering tone

DAVID HOCKNEY

through linear means before the advent of aquatint and is

A Wooded Landscape The Haunted Castle

the forerunner of the photographic half tone where th e image is translated through a screen into areas of dots of varying size (the newspaper photogra ph being the most

GIORGIO MORANDI

common example)

Savena Landscape landscape at Grizzana

Morandi's theme is the truancy of vision. His prints are, on one level, literalisations of the id ea that to See is to construct - that we sec everything through the

Printmaking can too often be viewed as a secondary

screens imposed by mental habit and the biology of

activity, a way of reproducing visual ideas th at find their

the human eye. Art cannot mirror the world, it can

primary explOl-ation within the artist's painting. In the case

only encode it - a theme which Morand i recognised

or Hockney and

the print is well adapted to express.

Morandi there is a genuine engagement

with the process of printmaking, not only as a mean s of

Andrew Graham-Dixon l '

rea ching a wider audience but also for celebrating th e very p;}rtiCldar qualities that th e m edi um offers. Etching was

Hockney was well familiar with Hogarth's prints such as

HTy important for Morandi, not only providing him with

The Rake's Pro8ress where, as was common practice, cross­

;}n income as Professor of Eng,-aving, but also for his

hatching was used as an overa ll m echanical means to

health, in his belief that a copper plate under his mattl-ess

render tone and suggest colour. But Hockncy seizes on the

forces.

expressive potential in thi s traditional process, detaching it

Printmaking for him was a form of alchemy, mixing the art

fi-om its previou s rationale, using the regular screen of

of the chemist with the philosopher.

lines as a counterpoint to th e fluidity of his drawing. In The

wuu ld

protect

him

from

electromagnetic

For both Morandi and Hoekney, th eir prints represent

Haunted Castle (1969) (p. 63) th e sky is rendered as an

suhstantial and sustained body of work, central to their

overall area of cro.,s-hatching, a reminder that for all the

artistic practice. For Hockney, th e quality of line realiscd

space that is implied in th e solidity of the castle, this is a

through etching immediately offered rich potential for him

image conjured from marks on a surface. Furthermore, as

to explore. In 1969 he produced a seri es of prints to

in A Wooded Landscape (p. 61), he works in conjunction with

accompany six fairy tales f'rom th e Brothe rs Grimm. They

aquatint so that th e deeply incised lines animate the

arc all etchings and aquatints anel build on the previous

otherwise flat areas of tone and indeed question the very

series of The Rake's Pro8ress and lIlustrationsJor thirteen Poems

convention of cross-hatching. While Hockney's prints revel

from C. P Cav'!fj. Howeve r, th ey have a very different quality

in innovation, a feature that was to develop through a

from these two previous series. Firstly, they appear more

staggering range of procl~ ssCS taking in, amongst others,

J

27

THE LANGUAGE OF LINE

lithography, fax and xerox and the extraordinary paper pulp im age~ of swimming pools, Morandi, having learnt his craft (sel f-ta ught from old manual s including The whole

f

art

of drawina,

limmina and etchina , published in 1660 by

Odoardo Fialetti , a copy o f which can be found in the British Library), developed a g raphic language almost exclusively from the limi ted means o f hard g ro und e tching and cross -hatch ing. As in hi s overall practice, his approac h to print is to close down options in o rd e r to go dee per. (William Till ye r in his prints from the 1960s also fix ed upon the use of cross- hatching as a way of developing images which s(Tmed to emerge o ut of the grid,) Morandi's graph ic language, whilst in cs.sence ve ry simple and direct , provides for a wide va riet), of solutions, as can be s('cn in SaFena Landscape ( 1929) (p . 60) and Landscape at Gri zza na ( 19 32) (p. 62). Morandi wo uld etc h the plates with care to ensure that the lines retain ed the ir specifity and did not expand into o ne ano ther. Thi s required a refined sensitivity to the basic e lements oj' etching: metal, acid, ink and, in particular, time, It is through the control of time that th e tona l values of the print are established - the longe r in the acid , the darker the line, In this way the surface of these prints vibrates with a sense of light that keeps e ven the darkest areas ali ve and open, A fUl-th er point , pa'-ticularly evid e nt in these prints, is the usc of the paper as a colour, Morandi draws with the wh.ite une tched areas, the paper being the fir st lightest tone, he leaves the road and the sky un l'tched, but the road, contained as it is, takes on a di ffe ren t charJctcr to the sky, T he re is an inte resting com pari so n to be made betwee n Morandi 's Landscape at Gri zza na and Hockney's A Wooded Landscape. Compositi o nally, they both use the device of the tree to the left of the picture to lead into the space and provid e essenti al c1ul'~ of scale . While Mo rand i

rIg. 12, DOVld Hockney, Tile PrtllCess in Her Tower (detail), from II/uwolions (or Six

places his tree within the picture as a marke r, Hockn ey

Foiry Toles (rom Ihe 8rclhers Gnmm, 1969, etching 45 x 32 em, MOlco livi ngsto n

presents hi s as a fram e, a flattened shape emphasisi ng the

28

THE lANGUAGE OF LINE

convcntion. Likewise, Hockney raises the eye level to

PAUL COLDWELL

stress the journey from Foreground, over the fi elds, to the

Pestle & Mortar

house on the hill , while Morandi's hOI-i zo n is concealed hehind the turning in the road . The barn is just discernable

GIORGIO MORANDI

JS a triangle of light .

Still Life in Broad Strokes

Hockn ey's use of white is equally incisive. In the Grimm etchings he makes a feature of the plate wiped

Most days I travel from my home in north London across

ckan, using it to both indicate colour but also stillness ,

to Camberwe ll where I teach. The journey takes me on a

acting to inte nsify those areas of drawn acti o n. In

familiar route, through Whiteehapel, the edge of the City,

I lockney's prints there is a playful approach to convention

over Tower Bridge through Bermondsey to Peckham.

Jnd hov,I styles can be freely embraCl'd , Th e GJa ss Mountain

London is a spreading metropolis, with a continually

heing a small essay in the graphic co nve ntion s of

evolving skyline as new towers appear and familiar

repn'sl'ntation. Morandi, meanwhile, appears at fir st to sit

landmarks become hidden or diminished. My work has

comfor tably within the convention but as can be Sl'l"n in

centred on o bj ects and ou r relationship to them, presence

Still Life

in

and absence. I have become awa re that this daily journey

radical

position

Broad Suokes actually takes o n an increasingly in

respec t

to

lin e

e tc hing

representation.

and

across Lond on has informed my sculpture and graphic work. In man y of my prints I fo cus on sculptures that I have made in the studio, which in turn become elements in my prints. But in thi s case, the objects I have used are found, a pestle and mortar. However, since the act of pho tog raphy can also be seen as the act of possessing and claiming ownership, once selected, the object becom es mine as much as if I'd made it myself. In the resulting print, Pestle

&..Mortar (1999) (p. 65), the objects carry both domestic connotations of th e kitchen aJongsiJe those of the studi o or laborato r y. The ir fun ction - to transform - is perh aps appropriate to be integrated within a dig itally made image, since when working digitall y all input becomes tran sform ed as it is procl'ssed into data; in this in stance the F,g '3, The Whole Rood outside Morandi's house. G rlZl ono

photograph beconll's as fluid as a drawing. By introduci ng the fing er prints into the image, I wanted to set up tensions not only between the languages of photography and drawing, but also between the surface and the impli ed space of the photograph. While the image is, on one level, quite straightforward, the viewer has to work ha rd to decipher it and needs to become actively involved in the

29

nlE LANGUAGE Of LINE

act of looking. The half-tone dot acts as a scnTn through

Everything is rendered through an orehvstration of etched

which th f' viewer perCl'ives a sha llow space, whil e the

lines, patches of tone rendered through the relationship

fingvr print itself b"comes another screen, assert ing the

and denSity of the lines . Morandi has settled on a limited

picture sur!C1('c, fun ctioning to both con ceal and reveal.

number of tonal intervals and the viewer has to visualise

The pixelated surfal'c also creates a slippagv between

the intermediary steps . From what the artist provides, thl'

whnv the fingerprint begins and ends.

viewer is left to actively add to the image of the bottks,

Morandi's prints have been a constant source of

and fill in the gaps. In my prints the photographic half-tone

first became aware of hi s work in the

repla n's Morandi's cross-hatching as a way of asserting t1w

1970s. Still Llj'e in Broad Strokes (1 931) (p. 64) is o ne of the

surface . Through the comp ute r, I am able to manipulate

larger format prints that MOI-andi made in the period

these dots, building up patterns through which thc objl;cts

betwecn 192733, during which he produced eight~' - s i x

can be perceived. I want to conjure the space that objects

prints, half of his total output. In this print, a stagl' proof

occupy and the melancholy of their absence - natura monu,

(the final print having the highlights on the o bjects

rather than still life, Like Morand i, through using a centrall

delinl'~ted

undramatic viewpoint with events parallel to the horizon,

in spiration since

J

polished to Vv'hite), the objl'l'IS are dramaticall y

again st a cross -hatched bac kg round, to the extent that

I want to emphasis the concerted ga uze and set up a

some of the objects are reduced to fragments, elements

framework of order and equilibrium in order to disrupt,

that have become detached, disem bodied, the shadows becoming one with

the overall

background

Morandi's practice of manipulating both his objects ;md

tone.

arrangements prior to making the print or painting is a

Refl eding Bologna in the heat of the summer, the dcep

further point of connection. Morandi possessed his

colonnades o ffer protection, but also submerge form s into

objects, taking th em out of the continuum o f the world

the darkness, forms which then hoap out as they emerge

into his own domain, fir stly by se lection, secondly h~

and are caught by the light - an arm suspended, a face

modifying the o bject (painting it or allowing dust to settle )

sli ced, a ('oat cut in two . I am certain that there is a

and thirdly through th e grad ual refinem e nt of thl'

memOl-y in this print of a sim ilar experience that Morandi

arrangement. There can be seen in this an almos t pencrs('

would have witnessed.

delay

in

gratification ,

further

reinforced

in

hi s

Morandi 's prints from this period demonstl-ate an

printmaking, with the practice of making test strips to

('xu'aordinary I-Jnge of poss ibil ities from just the tech nique

ascertai n the exact length of tim e for the plate to be etC' hcd

of hard ground e tc hing, from Various Objects on a Table

in the acid. The actual act of producing the print or the

( 193 1), whrrc the finest cross-h atc hing co njures an

painting is di spro port ionately qUick in relation to thl'

apparition of these objects as if seen as a gro up through a

preparation and anticipation. Likewise in my practice, it is

haLl', to Grand Still Life with a Coffee Pot of 1933, where the

important to me that the final print conceals its often

organisation of tones creates a h:>i' ling of warm sunligh t

pond ero us and lengthy evoluti on. Making the objects,

acrllSS the cknse arrangeme nt of his familiar

(~bj ec t s .

setting up the photograph, manipulating the image within

In Still L!fe in Broad Strokes, the su rface of the print is a

the computer, working in numero us layers to graduJn~·

mass of lines, trapping the forms in its web. The image

bring the imagl' to completion, are simply ways of keeping

asser ts the lang uage of its making; this is not naturalism

the image fluid with all elements up for change until thl'

bu t t he most appropriate form of r econst ru ction,

very last minute. J

WAITING 'tOOMS

space?' - could Simil arly apply to the work of Willing and

WAITING

OOMS

Winstanley.

Willing imagines spaces, cr eating rooms where mysteries are conjured. And everyth ing that is in the

VICTOR WILLING

paintings was meant to be th ere. Everything had to

Still life with Model Soot

have a real reason to be th ere, to occupy o r define space. Vic didn't approve of devices. In all his

GIORGIO MORANDI

paintings, emotion s felt physically and ideas

Still life, '961

developed conceptually are expressC'd formally. His work moves backwards and forwards between the figurative and the abstract, th e funny and the

We know the joys and sorrows to be found in a

disturbing, working out how best to express what he

gatc,yay, a street corner, a room, on th e surface of a

thought and trap the viewer into engaging with th e

ta hle , between the sides of a box ... An astronomy of

picture, without the need to exp lain away all its

things is established by the perfect knowledge o f the

seCl-ets.

space an object should occupy in a picture, and of the

Paula Rego "

space that separates one object from another ... The canons of th e Metaphysical aesthetic li e in th e minute

Willing was an enigmatic figure in British post-war art and

and precisely estimated deployment of surfaces and

one of the few to take on the challenge of expression as

,·olumes.

laid down by Francis Bacon. He was articulate and alive to Giorgio de Chirico

29

influences outside Britain, most notably in th e poignant sense of frozen time in de Chirico and th e existential

For a brief period, Morandi was part of th e group of

absence in Giacometti. It is also clear that Morandi 's work

~'lctaph;'sical artists, under the leadership of de Chirico

made a d eep imprf'ssion.

and Carra. In many ways this was a defining moment for ~'!()ra ndi,

Willing, after exhibiting in a number of important

establishing him at the centre of the Italian avant­

shows in London, moved to Portugal with Paula Rego,

garde, and while his conscious engagement with the

con tinuin g to paint and for a while running the family

mo\"(~ment

o nl y lasted a few years (1916- 19) there is a

business. Following the revolution in POI-tugal th ey

sense in which Morandi remain ed a Metaphysical artist all

r eturn e d to London with their family, Willing now

his lift:. Andrew Fo rge, in his introduction to th e 1970 Arts

diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Three inca Two Won '(

Council exh ibiti on \\Tote: ' \Vhat do we mean by an object,

Go was one of a number of paintings made while on a

h(' asks himself. What are the boundaries, which separate

residency at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1982.

one thing from another? 'vVhat are the ways of focusing by

By this stage , Willing was confined to a wheelchair and was

\\hich I divide the world up in discrete things or groups or

aware that this was his last opportunity to produce large

relationships?' "' These questions that Forge identifies - and

paintings. The collegC' gardener would call in to th e studi o

I \Yould add, ' how is it possible to evoke the silence of a

each day to check if he was alright and would turn the

31

WAITING ROOMS

paintings around so that he could paint the top that

more in this room than we are all owed to see . There is

otherwise he couldn't reach.

connection between Willing' s paintings of this period and

\1

Willing's work constructs spaces, corners of rooms (a

the work of Michael Kenny, Paul N('agu and Carl Plaxham,

reference to Bacon and Bachelard) and a metaphysical

amongst others, wh o were exploring me t aphysical

sense that there is something beyond representation. The

propositions through sculpture.

o bj ects await to be negotiated and, like de Chirico's

When J spoke to \Villing afte r the exhibition of his

l) iazzJs, there is a mood of foreboding and mystery, only

drawings at Karste n Schubert in 1987, he was eager to

lightened by his vibrant use of colour. The painting seems

know about how the exhibition looked , what the rcspons('

to represent fundam ental building blocks; the sphere, the

was to the pictures. Over a meal later that eveni ng , we

cube, the pyrJ mid, a solid enactment of the diagram

talked about still life objects and tou ched on Morandi. lie

pictured on the wall. It reit-rs back to Place , a triptych

began moving the condim ents in a practical e xplanation or

painted Jive yea rs earli er, where in the left-hand panel a

positive and negative spaces , about the spau's in between

cube stands be low a drawn representation. The forms

being as concrete as the obj ects themselves . Immediatel)

inhabit the SPJCC as a proposition , suggesting a future use ,

the salt and pepper pots took on the function of Morandi 's

a lesson perhaps? There is more than a passi'ng rellTence to

vessels , the tabl e Morandi 's stage . This playfuln ess is

Durer 's Melancholia, where Durer 's earthbound angel is

appal'ent in Still L!fe with Model Boat (p. 67), painted in

surrounded by symbol s of the l-ational world. But Willing

Portugal in 1957. Here, Willing chall enges an otherwise

disturbs the stillness, adds an interj ection, a stick which

straightforward reading of a still life , by the inclu sion of J

leacl s the eye to behind th e cube, suggesting that there is

model boat, opening up the possibility o f thi s being a seascape, the boat left dry on the beach. This mu sing is endorsed by the intensity of vVilling's pale-ltc, ochre for beach, cobalt for sky. The metaphor is held in t ension, oscilbting between the imaginative ,ision and the simple recorded facts of observed ubjects upon a table. Willing was one of thuse rare artists who

WJS

Jbk to

portray images with words as well as paint. His writings are wonderfully evocative, the weight of each word and its placement testify to a poet's understanding of language. That evening around the table, Willing was able to mah' us believe in transformation.

Still Life (1961) (p. 66), a late painting by Morandi, offers a fascinating juxtaposition to Willing's Still

l.ifeI\'ilh

Model Boat. Hen' Morandi dramatically divides his canYas across the middle , the dividing line following the lip

or the

flut ed jar while scr ving to cut the bottle, its neck sliced Fig 14 Viclor W illing. Three mlo Two Won I Go. 198 2 oil on convos,

from its body, left to float like an apparition. The ohjects

250 x 250 em. blole o/Ihe ortisl

have become djsembodied in a similar way to the sail in

32

WAITING ROOMS

Willing's painting, which is left suspended, a white

PW: Yes. Both for the audience and for the artist, but

tri~nglc

against an intense blue ground. In Morandi's

particularly for the artist in the sense that you cou ld

painting, thc colour takes on an expressive vibrant quality,

th ere fore achieve things that yo u would not otherwise have

particularly unusual in his work. There is a fee ling of the

thought of.

painting being informed by watercolour, a m edium

[ was fairly ignorant of Morandi whe n I was a student

Morandi increasingly used and in which some of his most

and I wish [ hadn't be en. My work at thl' Slade (as a

radical formal experiments were conducted.

stud e nt) was very abstract and I was really involved in the whole business of creating an abstract language in painting. When I left college, which was toward th e end of the '70s, th e re was a huge cultural SC'J change happening and I

PAUL WINSTANLEY

think I was very sensitive to that . In a scnSl: I always think

Interior 10

that when MargaretThatcher won th e election in 1979 the political change absolutely coincided with the end of high

GIORGIO MORANDI

Still life 1959

modernism. The sea change was almost that abrupt.

pc: Bifore that,

if yo u

were abstract y ou were seen as being

modernist and the cuttin8 edge and then suddenly . .. ?

Like Willing, Winstanl ey also paints rooms but these are informed by and reference the gaze of th e camera.

PW: Yes. And then th e game completely changed . It was a political and cultural change. It was a schism almost. My

Paul Winstanley: My relationship to someone like Morandi entire life from the mid-50s onwards had been within this lies in the way that I see the practice of making art as very cultural framework, which ended at the end of the '70s. much an internalising proce'ss in which a perso nal and When I le ft college in '78, for two or thnT years there uni\(' rsal language is developed through a process of were huge upheavals in my work and changes. And I was simulation and rcpetition. For me, that is ve ry important. not at all sure how it was going to resolve itsel f and that And the qu c-stion of tim e relates to this because this is not took probably ten years. Then during the ' 80s I felt like a somdhing that you achieve in a mome nt. And neither did ~'lorandi,

refugee in my own country, in a strange kind of way. 1 however successful he might have become in the don't think it was just about finding my own pe rsonal

, lOs and' 40s. I think in my own practice there are certain language. I think actually it was a politi ca l and social subjects which ohsC'ss me , and to which I return, subj ects change out there in the world. alld l1loUfs which recur ovcr and over in th e work. And I look at thC'm in a different kind of way at different times

PC: Returnin8 to your work, time in your paintin8 - and the

and produce new paintings and n ew expressions of those

rension hcrll'ccn the makin8

ideas as time passes. Thi s repetition is somehow very

about aJrozen moment and th eJact that it takes weeks, months to

r('waling; it enables something to be created that wouldn't

make ~ seems a major preoccupation Jor you.

?i' a

paintin8 which is ostensibly

othcr\\'ise ex ist. PvV: Yes, this is central to the work. And also this is ofte n Paul Coldwell: Is the idea Hr) deel'er inro th e subject?

?i' repetition like a mantra in order co

rcJlected in the choice of subjC'ct matter. People regard some of the inte riors I paint as being like w aiting rooms

33

WAITING ROOMS

where time is spent; wasted even . In a way, in some of the

are in hospital corridors where you feel that the metaphor extends

works, there is this multi-levelled notion of time. And also

to a notion

if life bein8 a waitin8 room.

the sense of nothing much happening in the content of the PW: Metaphor is very important. It's a point of work, in the image. And yet there is a kind of dichotomy communication between the artist and the audience that between that and the instant frozen moments of the can be very fluid. I did a whole series called Veil. In these photographs that the painting comes from . Although this paintings there is a room with a floor-to-ceil ing window, has changed over the years hccause I now often work from which extends along all of one wall, which has a net a few photographs and because I also work digitally on the curtain covering it. And I made a whole series of paintings computer and the photograph becomes very malleable , based on this situation. In some of them there is nothing almost like clay. And I manipulate and change and create on behind the curtain, just a kind of absence or just the the computer images that sometimes don't actually exist, presence of light, just light coming into the interior and in the end, in the real world. Morandi's work is perhaps bouncing around. In others you could just make out this the most abstract looking figurative painting. I al·ways landscape. And so there is this multi-layering of surfaces in regarded myself essentially as an abstract painter working which things are distinct or less distinct or invisible, and figuratively in the way I dream the images up in the first for me that series of paintings is rich in metaphor. When I instance and then go and find something that will match the idea in the world, then come back with some evidence

am making a painting I am creating something with potential. I am not closing it down.

of that in the form of photographs. Afterwards, I turn those photographs more closely into the thing that I want

pc: Do you.find that the reality

and then create the model for that, sometimes in the

you?

if the photo8raph helps around

computer and sometimes through drawing, and finally I PW: Yes , it makes it much more . .. it is interesting actually make the painting. So that things go through all these

... Thinking about when I was making abstract paintings it

different stages. was possible to slip into something very generalised

pc: Distillin8?

whereas now...

let's say slip into something vcry

generalised in the search for something universal; but you PW:

Yes,

distilling,

stripping

down,

changing, miss it because it is not specific enough .. . whereas now I

manipulating. And in the end you have the painting. And think the imagery is incredibly specific. And somehow, the painting is not just the distillation of the time it took to ironi cally, it is therefore much, much more possible to paint but it is also the distillation of the whole thinking achieve a kind of universal in the work, or universal set oj" process from the very first dream of it. It is like dreaming values. I think you need the detail , and you need the something into its existence but then it has this physical form. And that is exactly what I was doing twenty-five

specific quality of a particular place and howt'HT you usc it or misuse it, you've got it there in the image and,

years ago at the Slade, painting these abstrac.t paintings. Although they now have tills other, richer kind of content.

eventually, in the painting. This really relates strongly to Morandi; he spent a

if Beckett about them.

lifetime painting mostly a few objects that he had in his

The ones 1found mas. poi8nant are when they looked as if they

studio and however sophisticated his studio arrangements

pc: Some

ifyour paintin8s have an

air

WAITING ROOMS

were or were not, he was able to repeatedly paint and

designed sometime in the '60s. So it ha s got a very

approach these incredibly commonplace things and create

stripped down, cleaned interior; there are no decorative

something out of that situation. It was not just universal

features and there are no personal features in this room

hut developed a sense of the un iversal over a long period

because it is in an institution. And it is shared; it is usually

of time. And that is one of the things that I really admire. I

shared by different people, but it aspires to some kind of

also admire the fact that he did not have to step outside of

lounge, because it has a few chairs and a few low tables, a

his front door to do that as well.

TV in the corner, but nothing else. And it has a beau tiful

pc: In Morandi the studi o co uld be thought

of as a laboratory of

polished wooden floor with no mats or rugs or anything and so in a way it has a quality of banality, which m akes it

iJeas and the way that ideas about the world are brought in and

incredibly valuable to me. The first tim e I used it I took a remade within the studi o in order to be interpreted through

whole set of photographs and videoed it and did various paintings. It is interesting yo u talking about photography - I know you use slides, yo u use the computer, all these kinds

rf ways

oJ.fiitering what is going on outside.

things. Back in the '90s I made a small group of paintings of the interior both in the day and at night. And then recentl y I have been back and looked at it again and the

PW: Exactly.

images coming out this time, of exactly the same room ,

PC: Basically the miff is mamifactured within the studi o ..

which has hardly changed at all, are incredibly different . And these are almost like emotional and inte llectual

PW: Absolutely, it is absolutely the same in that re spect.

changes in ...

pc: In Morandi's works t here are three main themes - stilll!fes,

pc: In you?

landscapes and th e flower compositions. Do you feel particularly close to anyon e

of those?

PW: In me, this is the interesting thing; it is not the place that changed at all, it is my response to it. Now you would

PW: To the still ]ifes in particular because they are

think using a camera to record it you would somehow

generated exclusively within the studio. You sense that the

come up with some objective truth about it. But, in fact,

still life has been put together in a particular configuration

the camera seams to act as a vehicle for a kind of hidden

for a certain reason, every choice is crucial.

subjectivity; hidden, sometimes, even from me .

pc: There is an enormous amount

of work

that happens before

pc: So yo ur paintings are vehicles

rf you

understandi ng yo ur

el'en thefirst brush mark is made.

emotional develop ment?

[,W: Yes, that is true. The painting process starts in the

PW: Yes. Or at least they are a sounding board for my

head, starts by dreaming. [ think if, for in stance, you have

emotional, intellectual , complete human developme nt,

heen painting stilllifes for thirty years , you can be so much

yes.

more particular about articulating an idea than you could PC:;: Would yo u soy that the more these rooms are stripped from

ha\'e been in the beginning. I have a favourite room that ]\-c

used for different paintings . I di scovered thi s room

sometime in the middle of the '90s, and it is in a stud ent hall of reside nce. It is a TV room in a modernist building

any specific references, the more that yo u fee l what is projected onto them or what you put in to them is coming]rom yo urfee lings?

PW: Yes. Sometimes nature gets in the way of art and you

35

MEASURED SPACES AND PASSING TIME

don't want too much of it and so you have reduce its impact slightly. 12

vVinstanley, in Interior 10 (p. 69), shows a similar concern for structure and placement as is evidenced in Morandi's Still Life (p. 68). It also shares a formal viewpoint by which

MEASURED SPACES AN PASSING TIME

the scene is presented square on, with a set of incidents laid out parallel to the horiwntal. Morandi makes a

EUAN UGLOW

conscious decision to throw the balance off centre, cutting

Still Life with Delft Jar

the tin on the right-hand sid e , rare in his overall work where the objects tend to be presented complete. This is

GIORGIO MORANDI

offset by the assertive verticals, whi ch he sets up in the

Flowers

composition, wrestling the picture back to a dynamic equilibrium. The viewer is made very aware of the rectangle (just off square) as a framing device. Winstanley

In an adjoining room in the Museo Morandi are a small

rekrences the convention of photography to fix an image

group of pictures owned by Morandi. There are a number

within the rectangle and we approach the incidents within

of Rembrandt etchings, most significantly The Ne9 ress, in

the painting - coffee table, chairs and window - formally

which Rembrandt builds up a mass of lines to create the

as be ing of equal value. This formality, along with the

dark voluptuous form of a reclining nude, an obvious

anonymity of the room, heightens our sense of di squiet,

inspiration for Morandi's intense still life etchings from the

not of menace, but of those moments where the

1930s.

environment is at odds with our anxieties (waiting rooms,

But more subtle in its influence is a small painting by

hospitals, inte rview rooms). Spaces where the re is no

Pietro Longhi (1702- 85), Donna e tol'olino con fori, which

record of accumulated experience, no evide nce of

pictures a corseted lady, little pink flowers in her hair and

previous occupation, a space severely practical, clean and

her hand poised e rotically to enter a lace muff, a little

offering no reassurance, no escape, except for perhaps the

flower in a vase on a small table to the side. Morandi rarely

tree outside .

painted the figure and in my view, when he did, they arc singularly unsuccessful. They resemble portraits on coins, stiff, invariably profile and lifeless. What is it that enables an artist to animate the most banal of objects and yet freeze when confronted with a figure? However, in Morandi's flower paintings, the flowers in their simple vases begin to take on the quality of portraits and allude to the desire to connect. Morandi throughout his life painted compositions with flowe rs, some like formal portraits where the artificial flowers are arranged in a single vase, and other, more informal paintings and prints of wild

36

MEASURED SPACES AND PASSING TIME

flowers gathered when out walking. FJowers (1950) (p. 70)

life and landscape. Still Life with Delft Jar (p. 71) is an essay

is one of the most compelling of these formal flower

in the mechanics of looking and painting. The surface of the

compositions; its stark arrangement and tightly configured

canvas is littered with reference points which reveal the

flower s contained within a simple vase scems to refer

evidence of the painting's slow evolution, each mark

back to the Longhi painting, the fluted vas(' echoing the

allowing the artist to navigate his way from the three

lady's tight bodice, while the blooms suggest the her hair

dim ension al ex per ien ce of looking towards a two

with its floral decoration. Morandi positions the vase

dimensional reconstruction on the canvas. The evidence of

completely central and isolated within space, the only

this mapping both acts as a memory of the painting's

exception being the thin shadow to the right, whieh is

history, and also leads the viewer across the surface,

offset by Morandi 's signature to the left. This is a picture of

reminding at every point that this is a fabri cation, a

intense stillness against which the fleshy pinks and free

conceit . Uglow ,vas an impor tant figure in maintaining the

working of the petals create a suggestion of erotic tensio n

tradition of life painting in colleges, teaching regularly at

and desire.

the Slade, alongside Patri ck George, William Coldstream

Euan Uglow's work is predicated on the problem of how to make an equivalent in painting to the act of seeing

and Lawrence Gowing. Daphne Todd , herself a painter and pupil of Uglow recalls:

and in that respect alone would conn ect with Morandi's Euan 's still !ifes often concentrate the simple

credo. Uglow, perhap s best known for his paintings of women, invariably nude, also worked exten sively from still

domestic forms in the centre of the field of vision, thus eliminating the perspectival problems that would arise outside a thirty degree angle. The mesmerising effect of gazing at so mething, or someone, head on is clearly epitomi sed by the work of both Giacometti and Morandi and follows through into that of Coldstream and Uglow. I do , however, re ca ll Euan pointing out that all paintings are done from memory,

Fig. 15, Pieiro long hi, Donnu e lovolrno con

{IOrl, ~.

17 80,

oil on canvas, LlO x 29 8 ern. M useo M OIDn di, Bologno

fig . 16 , Remblondl van Rijn. The Negress, 1658. coppel elchlng, 8 x 15.7 ern, usec Morand;, Boloo no

37

MEASURED SPACES AND PASSING TIME

an observation born out by the recent study

RACHEL WHITEREAD

u.ndertaken by John Tchalenko of the eye movements

Untitled (Twenty-Four Switches)

of the painter Humphrey Ocean while painting a portrait. Euan talked about distilling the image.

GIORGIO MORANDI

(It was not the only thing he distilled; some form

Still Lile, 1944

of calvados dripped from a bubbling glass demi-john at the appropriate time of each year.) He would aim

Whiteread, like Uglow, sets out to record the passing of

at reducing the number of coloured tones to the

time. Plaster, the material most associated with her, and

simplest equation, not by design, but by analysis.

the process of casting, is ideal for fixing the effects of time.

He was not clever enough, he said, to do it any

The white plaster throws up material evidence, ignoring

other way. JJ

the distraction of colour or surface pattern, to reveal the history of each surface. Her work has a rational imperative

Todd modelled for Uglow for the painting Nude; Twelve

of conveying facts: this was the space under a table, this

Vertical Positionsfrom the Eye, now in the Walker Art Gallery,

was the space in a terraced house, this was the cast of a

Liverpool, requiring eight hours posing a week over

floor. The process of casting carries through this

eighteen months, an indication of the investment required

rationalism in its planning and execution, each proposition

both from the artist and model. The still lifes, likewise,

requiring a different solution. Casting reverses facts;

required months to complete; bread would rot and need

negatives become positives, voids become solids, it's the

restoring, fruit would go off and need replacing.

world of Alice Throu8h the Lookin8 Glass where the viewer is

Still Life with Deljt Jar doggedly resists any literal

38

presented with a reflection of the familiar world.

reading; the objects seem chosen for their formal qualities

Untitled (Twenty-Four SWitches) (1998) (p. 73) is a

and a hidden geometry. While Morandi 's Flowers suggest

disarming piece, modest in comparison to the majority of

longing, Uglow's painting evokes austerity, a life in which

her work and yet contains much that is the essence of her

the intellect struggles against the flesh, where proportion,

practice. At first glance this appears as simply a bank of

placement and structure dominate the argument. In the

light switches, the kind located in any basement or

painting he refers back to ideas of the Reformation,

warehouse. But on inspection the viewer realises that

intellect being expressed

the

something is not quite as it appears, a reversal has occurred.

subjugation of pleasure and decoration. The delft jar in the

The only clues are in the screw heads, which are nO\\'

painting, whilst referencing the austerity of Dutch art, is

rendered as negatives. The fascia therefore is an impression

itself the most modest of objects, its minimal decoration

of the original, the switches that are in the on position,

the only distraction on this otherwise simple cylindrical

were off and vice versa; they have been switched. The box,

form. And in Uglow's painting, even this decoration is

however, is a positive cast, so this piece represents two

reduced and fu.nctions as a marker within the overall

casts brought together. The choice of the object is crucial

painting. Both Uglow and Morandi would have recognised

- why has it been taken out of the flow of time and its

the virtues in each other of dedication and an almost

function transformed from utilitarian to art? The object

monkish devotion to their craft at the expense of earthly

speaks of rationality, twenty-four switches (twenty-four

pleasure.

hours) the measurement of time and the control of light.

through denial and

MEASURED SPACES AND PASSING TIME

r:urthermore , in its design it speaks of organisation,

and a means to build . These drawings bear a close re­

pragmatism and fun ctionality, a way of ordering the world .

semblance to Whiteread's earl y plaster sculptures leading

Finally, the object is a multiple, further placing it within

up to Gh ost, her cast of an empty room.

the realms of manufacture and the factory, rather than the studio.

In these sculptures the proccss of casting in sections becomes a formal device which reveals the logic of their

Morandi 's drawings reference these concerns with

making, and also acts as a linea r element, literally a dra\ovn

d ear evidence of positive and negative and the reversal of

grid across the sculpture. This g rid is negotiated with the

the expected. In Still Life (1944) (p. 72) the drawing is

inherent structure of each pi cC(~ , to ensure the prac­

tantalisingly balanced between forms and the shapes form s

ticalities of achieving a true cast, avoiding undercuts etc.,

make when they intersect. In another still life of 1959, the

but also to divide th e space into regular blocks , giving the

group of vessels and boxes become one form, sharing a

pieces the qualities of masonr y and its reliance on the right

common outline with just the briefest of clues to suggest

angle and the vertical.

the identity of each individual object. Morandi's drawings

Both Morandi and Whiteread revisit the same motifs, as

make clear the impor tance of interval and structure in the

if drawn to the familiar as a chall enge to innovation. Fiona

constru ction of hi s paintings. There is a measured division

Bradley, who curated Whiteread's exhibition Sheddin8 Life

of the paper into interlocking blocks; it is a plan, a guide,

atTate Liverpool, said:

Fig. 17 Rochel Whllereod. Ghost, 1990. plosler o n sleel frome.

269 x 355 .5 x 3175 em. NOlional G alle ry of Arl. WashingIon

39

LOST AND FOUND

She nl-st of all seeks out something which is going to be

wants to know what the space under a staircase is

sympathetic to what she wants to do and then works

like, it is a definite, almost formalist desire to know

with it in a very particular way, to re-own it. .. And it

how it looks. H

is a way of finding out about things and how they are affected by being lived with. So she is interested in

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