More than 20 years ago, I met the work of Morandi, who was born here, in the Giorgio Morandi Gallery on the second floor of the Town Hall in Bologna, a northern Italian city. The first time I saw the original, those small, gray oil paintings that were quite close to each other in color and color touched a nerve and shook my soul. Those works are hung on the wall, quietly exuding an elegant and quiet atmosphere, as if there is a gentle breeze to send a hint of coolness.
Morandi has lived in the city almost all his life. Like an ascetic, he has no requirements for life, simple and orderly, going back and forth to the studio every day with the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts, where he teaches, living a monastic life. He silently practiced his perception and released his soul in those altars and jars, the greenery on the outskirts of the city, and the distant mountains at the end of the path. His studio was small, with a simple single bed, gray overalls hanging from hangers, a vein of gray that belonged to his still life, and bottles and jars in the corner of the wall. I suddenly remembered Liu Yuxi's "Buried Room Inscription": "The mountain is not high, and the immortals are named." The water is not deep, there are dragons and spirits. ”
Morandi painted in the studio, taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, paced in his spare time, and walked along the wind-sheltered gallery to the church on the top of the hill. Contemplating the trajectory of his paintings from the metaphysical steps of Chirico, the continuing meaning of Cézanne's three-dimensional deconstruction. He is not ostentatious, unpretentious, silently playing and singing the quietness of his heart, and the altar jars and vases he fiddles with and arranges are painted with the gray color that is regarded as a god by the design community - Morandi color. How could he know that those grays would become synonymous with fashion in the future? He does not seek to manifest, obscure, he has no intention of caring about reputation, but with bottles, flowers, and the grass and trees of his hometown, he has created a unique elegance and charm; The bottles and cans he fiddled with, seemingly arbitrary combinations and random arrangements, were the place of his life's mind; He constantly modified the structure of the altar jar rows, softened the colors under different lights, and made small, specific speculative depictions of them, exploring a form of disintegration of objects.
The sparse houses in the suburbs are shaded by greenery, and Morandi's composition and subtraction of brushstrokes are just right, just like the Chinese painting "I don't realize the pen"; A path connects the distant mountains, and a long shadow is dragged out in the sun, generating simplicity, and Morandi interprets the natural carrier into a meaningful form. Morandi said: "Our perception of the external world is difficult or even impossible to describe in words, because the world that is visually reached is determined by form, color, space, and light." "His work reveals a poetic world through perceived colors, spaces, light, etc.
I think of Zhu Yun, one of China's Bada Shan people. The country is broken, the family is dead and cold, and the perception of the Bada Shan people transcends the real world. He painted birds and birds looking at the blue sky with white eyes, he wrote lotus branches and branches and zen hearts, and he turned the remnants of mountains and rivers into spiritual habitats. His emptiness, thoughtfulness, and seclusion are spiritually connected to Morandi's quest. The deep connotations of the emptiness, idealism, silence, elegance, and pattern of Morandi's works may be similar to the realm of the Bada Shanren.
Morandi's paintings are strictly at the mercy of the standard, but they are highly elegant, and those disorderly arrangements show the peace of mind; The gaps in his brushstrokes reveal a quiet elegance; The seemingly flat composition is the place where the soul goes. His bold experiments and innovations in color and composition have gradually disintegrated the forms of objects that we are familiar with on his canvas. His work challenges people's inherent perception of everyday events, transcending the perceptible world and entering a space that cannot be explained in words.
The still lifes in his paintings are living bodies, and their breathing and chanting play the tide of the times. His still life is like the plum written by Jin Dongxin in the Eight Monsters of Yangzhou, one by one, which is safely covered with plain paper, but it does not appear to be blocked, and the heart has a place to go; It is also like the Eight Great Mountain People painting lotus, careless branches are arbitrarily settled one by one, but they tell the sadness to the end. From Morandi's colors, some people interpret Zen, some people read elegance, and some people find emptiness and tranquility.
The architecture of Bologna is gray and red, like the color of Morandi, which is the symbol of the city and the symbol of Morandi. Morandi was always quietly watching the city from the side of the square. Today, Morandi looks out over the banks of the Pu River on the Bund in Shanghai. The Huangpu River is leisurely, and the towering buildings are silent, as if they are also looking at Morandi.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Huang Wei Text Editor: Luan Yinzhi
本文图片由久事美术馆提供 Source: Author: Huang Azhong