1.
Giorgio Morandi in Korea
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea is
delighted to present the art of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) who was one of the
great masters of modern Italian art for the first time in Korea. This
exhibition features an outstanding grouping of approximately forty works of
Morandi’s oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and etchings carefully selected
from the collection of Museo Morandi in Bologna. These works of Morandi were
made during his artistic maturity from the 1940s to the 1960s, use scenes and
sites of everyday life as their subject matter such as commonplace objects and
landscapes, and yet are endowed with the artist’s original creativity.
These everyday subjects, which are almost persistently repeated
in the work of Morandi, are unfolded in subtle and tranquil variations in terms
of form, composition, and color while being reconfigured in a new order. Each
and every work of Morandi who said “The only interest the visible world awakens
in me concerns space, light, color and forms” and “Nothing is more abstract
than reality” opens the door to the nature of being through their simplicity
and serenity. This is the very reason that the art of Morandi was highly
esteemed even in the mid-twentieth century when abstract art, which can be
characterized by the hugeness of scale and an emphasis on energetic gesture,
dominated the international art scene and a countless number of artists have
found inspirations in the work of Morandi. It is genuinely anticipated that
this exhibition caters today’s people’s need to shield themselves from the
exposure to the overwhelming amount of image-based information and noise in
this present-day society by enabling viewers to immerse themselves in the works
of art that are permeated by the deep contemplation which the artist achieved
through endurance and restraint and offer through the channel of suggestion a
valuable experience through which they are enabled to penetrate the nature of
relationship.
The
Still Life
For Morandi who is also described
as a “painter of bottles,” still life painting was the peerless medium through
which he could explore and define the constitution and quintessence of painting
and could inquire into the root and relationship of being. His still lifes are
about visual experiences while empowering viewers to constantly question what
they are seeing right now. Morandi picked up bottles of various shapes and
sizes at flea markets, removed labels and painted over them so as to deprive
them of their original properties and objecthood.
The
Shells
His works of seashells indicate
that Morandi abandoned, for a while, his main repertoire of everyday objects
and was instead captivated by unusual forms—that is, baroque, irregular
contours and rounded surfaces of perfect spiralness.
The
Flowers
Morandi’s flower paintings seem to
vibrate with luscious beauty generated by the use of sensuous tones and the
delicate and fragile texture of the petals evocative of the feel of soft silk.
As such different hues as pearly white, pink, and green play a muted jazz
concerto, his flowers boast their blossomy elegance and innocent purity.
The
Landscape
Like his still lifes, Morandi’s
landscape paintings of his later years shown here are marked by his experiments
in the dramatic simplification of form, his use of drastic contrasts of light,
his confident choice of colors, and his achievement of a quiet, alluring
orchestration of colors. His characteristic variations are detected in the
reiteration of such subject matters and elements as geometrically shaped
buildings, the contrast between light and shade, and the rhythms of vegetation.
2.
Dialogue with Morandi
Having had been intimately connected to its centuries-old
traditions, the Italian art of the twentieth-century underwent dynamic
developments while responding to the changes of the times, like
twentieth-century Korean art, which similarly upheld its long tradition and
experienced rapid changes during the modern
period. This is why it would be quite illuminating to apply a comparative
perspective on the examination of the arts of these two countries, which are in
the same latitude—one in the West and the other in the East. It is particularly
true that what one can discern in Morandi’s paintings—simplicity of non-superfluity,
the aesthetics of restraint and placidity, empty fullness, and consistent
emotional tension—fill the gap between the East whose emphasis is given to the
spiritual and the West whose focus is placed on the material and hence prompts
the possibility to place the West and the East in the same context and discuss
the encounter between them.
Laying emphasis on Morandi’s still lifes, which are the
highlights of this show, “Dialogue with Morandi” encourages a comparative
viewing with still lifes by those Korean artists who were contemporary to
Morandi. In addition, audiences are welcomed by works by Korean contemporary
artists who either were inspired by Morandi or approached the subject matter of
objects in ways similar to Morandi’s: To Sang-bong (1902-1977), Oh Ji-ho (1905-1982),
Kim Whan-ki (1913-1974), Park Soo-keun (1914-1965), Kim Ku-lim (1936- ), Choi
In-soo (1946- ), Sul Won-gi (1951- ), Ko Young-hoon (1952- ), Kang Mi-sun (1961-
), Shin Mee-kyoung (1967-), Hwang Hae-sun (1969- ), Lee Yoon-jean (1972- ) and
Jeong Bo-young (1973- ).
