It's a beautiful show, a friend who I trust told me, so I put a recharged battery in my camera and walked slowly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is the largest American retrospective of the tall and quiet Italian modern master, Giorgio Morandi, who lived from 1890-1964. The show is downstairs in the Met rotunda which is a very interesting place to view his work, walking around in a circle in different light viewing his simple but effusive art because that was exactly how Morandi practiced his craft, painting the same subject in different light. 110 pieces of work including his favorite oeuvre still life but including landscapes and several magnificent self-portraits. It is a show that is marvelous in its depth but also in the history of what is the greatest modern artist of Italy. Working in stoic indifference over five decades, not being swayed by all around him, Morandi by just doing what he did, certainly influence surrealism, futurism, minimalism and finally although many would disagree pop and abstraction. The pop reference is more easily seen with Morandi's revealing but simple still lifes but abstraction? This was influenced very simply in my mind by one of his quotes, so simple but a defining remark in art, simply, "Nothing is more abstract than reality." This quote stuck with me as I walked around these simply beautiful works twice. The still lifes not still at all, they seem to float and dance in ethereal light illuminating each simple figure with a quality of immortality. I left with a sense of peace that is hard to feel as the economy falters and our society is thrown into a morass that we have not faced in a generation. Morandi's magic is fulfilling and makes you forget the reality that is so abstract...
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