Correspondeces The dialogue in a volume curated by Renato Miracco and Lorenzo Baldi (Cimorelli). Below, a part of the preface.
Perhaps Rothko and Morandi are not the most obvious of bedfellows. In their best-known works, scale immediately differentiates their engagement with the viewer - Rothjo often filling entire walls and Morandi seldom approaching a meter in the long dimension. Rothko is associated with passion and vibrant color in contrast to Morandi, the master of restraint. Rothko is seen as a rule-breaker who abandons figuration for pure abstraction, while Morandi remains faithful to still life, one of the oldest and most enduring painting subjects.
These dissimilarities, however, are a matter of phenotype, and little more; surface manifestations, overlaid with a touch of stereotype of what each artist accomplished. This public perception - not "entirely" wrong - lacks an appreciation of the nuance that lends character and greatness to their work, and which ultimately brings Morandi and Rothko closer together. In fact, I believe there is substantial common ground, not just in approach, but in the aims of these two artists; artists who probably never met but who doggedly pursued parallel paths in search of something beyond the surface of what they painted. In this brief piece I will consider only their late work, although I believe what I put forth applies to all periods of their carreer. I am often drawn to the last years of artists' oeuvre, not because I think there is necessarily any portent of the beyond, but because I consistently find that in their final years artists achieve a palpable distillation of all they have previously attempted to convey (...).
We will examine several of the ways in which these two artists use similar expressive and material means to speak to/with their viewers, but al the core what makes these two artists kindred spirits in their profund honesty. This despite the fact that Rothko is on record saying he painted "facades".
These are not artists whose works are depicting something else, something only hinted at by what they have rendered. There is no code or referent or artifice. You must interact directly with what they have painted, and extract meaning from what would seem initially to lack all meaning whatsoever.
What then motivates us to find the more in these paintings? Chiefly that these two artists create believable spaces and fill them with "objects" that feel real and present. When we examine the Morandi still life from 1952, we are struck by how immediate these simple, familiar objects seem. We want to reach out and touch them, not because we do not believe that they are real, but because we are so conviced that they are. Morandi paints flat forms with no use of linear perspective, no paint texture and a minimum of shading. And yet these objects are in the room with us and, in their unassuming way, exude a compelling sensuality that adds to their tangibility.
I will add that in Morandi's hands, the color white is truly alive - filled with charachter and marked by history.
We can say much the same for Rothko's untitled painting on paper from 1959. We may not know where we are, and yet is a where that we recognize and find credible.
The forms move despite the lack of any force to propel them. The many layers of colors just visible in portions of the central rectangle reflect a complexity that we know lies beneath the simplest of things, or at least in our reactions to them. The apparently weathered surface can remind us of the mottled surface of Morandi's bottles and canisters - things that have touched lives and participated in lived experience. Rothko is painting abstract objects that are, arguably, even more pedestrian that Morandi, but like his Italian counterpart he compels us to look at them. And while no one would describe the brown and purple color scheme as cinematic, it does evoke deep association to body and earth.
I will touch two additional pictoial features that show similarities in the ways that Morandi and Rothko manage the energy of their paintings. the first of these centers on the interaction of their objects within the picture. The massing and spacing of Morandi's pitchers and canisters changes with each picture, bringing those items into different relationships with each other. the same is absolutely true of Rothko's rectangles, which interact with one another in terms of color relationships, but also in juxtaposition of form and apparent mass. The most vital manifestation of this interaction is the typically small space between the rectangles, where the background shows through and the edges of the rectangles come into dynamic interplay (Untitled, 1959).
Morandi creates a similarly energized space by use of shadow, making the darkness between some objects into an alluring place of its own. The shadow not only throws the vessels themselves into relief, but adds a new dimension to his flat planes. This is not negative space but darkness made manifest and compelling (Still Lives, 1962 and 1956).
The backgrounds of Morandi's and Rothko paintings can also be uncannily similar (...).
Finally, I wish to touch upon what is the most readily apparent similarity between the two artists: a pronounced inclination toward repetition. Of course, I don't believe either of these artit's engaged in repetition at all, but there is an undeniable attachment to a signature format that they exercised for twenty years, in Rothko's case, and forty in Morandi's. two to five (typically two or three) rectangles arranged vertically in four hundred or more consecutive paintings, eight hundred if we include Rothko's substantial output of paintings on paper. Sounds rather monotonous. In the case of Morandi, although he does paint other scenes, the vast majority of the paintings of his mature years depict glassware and earthenware arranged on an interior table, with the light coming from the left. The cynical are wont to claim that each artist painted the same painting several hundred times. But such cynics have probably not looked at the artwork.
For both Morandi and Rothko, it is critical to view their artwork in person, not in reproduction. Here one can appreciate the nuances, the changes in tone and texture that makes each work a singular utterance that offers a unique interaction with the viewer.
The events
Giorgio Morandi/Mark Rothko (Dario Cimorelli Editore, 304 pages, € 40) brings together two central figures of art history. The book, curated by Renato Miracco and Lorenzo Balbi, is born out of a project by Franco Calarota and features a preface by Christopher Rothko, Mark's son. The volume was promoted by Fondazione Calarota, ACP - Art Capital Partners Palazzo Franchetti. It will be in bookstores from 16 November. That same day, it will be presented in Venice, at 5.00 pm, at ACP - Palazzo Franchetti by Fondazione Calarota, featuring the curators alongside Nico Stringa, Chiara Squarcina and Alessia Calarota. Among the presentations, events in Florence (Tuesday 1 December at Palazzo Pitti, 5.00 pm) and in Bologna (Wednesday 17 February, Sala dello Stabat Mater della Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, 5.00 pm).