Still Life Chapter 6 Flowers & Plants
Studies IV January 2014
Photographs Inspired by Giorgio Morandi
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #1
For an Introduction to the Still Life project and the links to all of its chapters visit: Still Life
Click on the images once to enlarge
Introduction
Morandi made paintings in three distinct subject categories throughout his life: he is most well known for his still lifes, but he also painted landscapes and Fiori, or flowers. This chapter of my Morandi inspired photography is the first in the project which is devoted to a single theme: flowers & plants. I am in the process of making landscape photographs inspired by Morandi as well.
Morandi's flower paintings are more obviously personal than his other works, it seems to me: they look and feel more intimate and poetic than most of his other works. (fig. 2 below) Perhaps this is in part because of the subject's ties to one of the major classical painting traditions, and perhaps because of their smaller, more intimate scale. (fig. 5 is 9x11 inches) But make no mistake, Morandi's flower paintings are quite unique upon close scrutiny.
One of Morandi's writer friends tells of a meeting with him at his studio where he saw several flower paintings hanging on the walls. He wrote that they were hung in such a way as to give the impression that Morandi never expected anyone other than himself to look at the paintings. It seems Morandi was protective of his flower paintings (he seldom made them available for sale), and we know that he made many of them intended as gifts for his closest friends and admirers as a gesture of his affection or gratitude (he gave flower paintings to many of his collectors, plus writers, critics, art historians, musicologists, etc).
It took me a while to fully appreciate the uniqueness of Morandi's flower paintings; they at first glimpse seemed odd to me, perhaps too quaint and old fashioned in certain ways. I may have been biased against the subject matter, in any case it was only after I carefully studied his entire creative output that I grew to understand and appreciate how Morandi's flower paintings fit into his overarching creative process: I eventually became charmed and even entranced by those that I could see in publication.
I grew to appreciate the simplicity, directness and often the understated inventiveness of the flower paintings which span Morandi's entire career, dating back to 1913. He produced many flower paintings in the 1920s, and in the 1940s, and there was an even greater proliferation of flower paintings in the 1950s.
Unlike his other still life works, which were carefully constructed compositions of forms/objects in relationship to each other, the flower paintings have only a singular subject, usually placed in or near the center of the frame. I feel kindred in spirit to the flower paintings because of their relationship to one of my favorite earlier projects projects begun in 1982 entitled "Thing Centered Photographs."
Multiple issues and influences
The flower paintings seem to have provided Morandi with a more relaxed forum for creative invention. Because he gave them as personal gifts, perhaps he felt permission to experiment with new ideas, or express private, heartfelt emotions that were more difficult to express through his other works.
We can see in his flower paintings how he used this subject to explore new ways of seeing, constructing picture space, and handling paint on the surface of his canvas. In a way, the flower paintings are made with the freedom of a study. I have become especially fascinated by the freedom of his oftentimes restless, vibrant brushstrokes within the backgrounds of the flower paintings, and as usual his struggle to resist in these paintings from moving toward total abstraction.
Morandi would frequently visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where Giotto's enthroned Virgin of the Maesta was displayed. He visited the Maesta repeatedly just to study Giotto's vase of flowers held by each of the angels on either side of the Virgin. I really identify with Morandi's enthusiasm for another artist! I go every day to the several monographs I own of Morandi's work and study the reproductions and texts "religiously" with a deep hunger to imbibe the creative spirit in his work, a creative spirit that I have always felt was intimately part of my own self.
Not only was Giotto an influence on the flower paintings, Renoir was an influence as well. And it is clear that other influences included Piero della Francesca, Cezanne, Picasso and the metaphysical painters. After Morandi died, researchers found in his personal library several books on oriental art that were well worn from his repeated study.
Influences are interesting to contemplate and learn from, however for me the most important thing to acknowledge in Morandi's work is the unique creative vision which he brought to the flower painting tradition.
Staged events, absolute backgrounds, light, color, tones
Of course the flower paintings, like his other still lifes, are staged events. He placed his singular bouquet of flowers (usually in a vase, but not always) in a timeless, mental, clear or pure space which some writers referred to as the "absolute space," or the void. There was usually a single horizon line in the background.
Sometimes he looked down at the flowers from directly above, or he would come very close to the flowers (hiding the vase), or he would crop into the space between the vase and the flowers in surprisingly unexpected ways. In several flower paintings he made use of raw canvas as a border surrounding the painted image. (fig. 5)
The light and atmosphere in the flower paintings cover a full range of qualities: from frontal, to angular, to shadowless; from harsh contrasty light and color relationships, to very soft light and colors in which everything becomes a muted grey, as if covered with a layer of dust . . . (fig. 2) which Maria Bandera (2008) termed Morandi's "ineffable tonal ranges." Marilena Pasquali characterized one flower painting as being pervaded by "a liquid dawn of light, golden as honey."
The space behind the flowers sometimes manifest a powerful visual presence of its own because of the way Morandi applied the paint with his brush to the surface of the canvas, oftentimes with fluidity, and sometimes with what appears to be an intense and rapid urgency. In fact, sometimes the background appears to come forward, toward me, leaving the flowers in the background. (fig. 3 ~ click on the image for a close view)
Fresh Cut, Dried, Silk . . . and plastic flowers
Morandi's earliest flower paintings were of fresh cut flowers, or dried flowers, but as he matured as an artist the use of real flowers, vulnerable to the transience of time, became less of a concern for him. His collection of objects to paint gradually included vases filled with silk flowers. At some point in his creative process it no longer mattered to him whether the flowers were "real" or "alive." In fact Morandi's paintings were never naturalistic; as he matured as an artist he became more and more interested in manifesting a certain essence or presence in his painting that relied more and more on dissolving the appearance of the subject matter. To the extent that his flower paintings are at all about flowers, I would venture to say that he was trying to reveal the archetype essence of flowers, or perhaps even flower painting. That is to say, I think he wanted to manifest a pictorial revelation of a timeless essence or presence associated with the universal subject "flowers." The picture was more important that what appears to be the subject.
I understand this better now that I've explored the world of flower imagery myself in this project. The picture becomes the most important thing; the subject matter is only important because it becomes the means, the point of departure that leads to the picture's essential qualities, or revelations. I have actually come to enjoy photographing plastic flowers and plants: I think it's because the challenge seems all the greater, then, to make an interesting, successful photograph, that is to say an image that transcends its artificial but nonetheless archetypal subject. Perhaps this explains well enough why I have not titled the individual photographs, named the kinds of flowers depicted. Each is a flower picture, and that is enough.
More about the square format
All of my photographs for the Morandi inspired project are made using the square format in a relatively intimate scale (approx. 8x8"). I have written in earlier chapters about the significance of the square format for me. I recently learned that in the early 1950's Morandi made a series of four flower paintings in the square format that became the focus of a fascinating commentary by a close friend of Morandi's, the poet, writer and art historian Francesco Arcangeli (who Morandi, after twenty years of friendship had a falling out with because he so strongly disagreed with his friend's interpretive reading of his work). Arcangeli believed there was an important turning point in Morandi's work in the early 1950's which was directly related to the series of four square-formated flower paintings. (see fig. 4) Here is what Archangeli wrote in his publication Giorgio Morandi [1964]:
Morandi clearly wished to meditate on the 'square composition' and varied the plan, the tones, the arrangements with so much artistic skill that, even if the composition seems unchanging, one cannot easily call either the individual paintings or the entire series 'tout court' classics. It is in fact obvious that a new 'intellectual' approach, even if now realized in tones that appear moderate, and almost always resolved with a fixed frontal light, was developing in his art. . . The [four paintings of 1950-51] where the flowers are placed tranquilly alone within the clear space . . . reacquire something of the mental will and the 'merciless' measure of metaphysics.
Whatever it takes
Collected here are photographs of flowers and plants which I have made specifically for this chapter of the project. There are basically two types of works: those in which I have photographed my subjects as I found them in their place; and those in which I have staged the subjects, in other words constructed the event which I photographed. I have written before how I would typically feel uncomfortable when I touched and changed my subjects and their environments before making a photograph. The images would feel tainted to me in some way, perhaps not as spontaneously authentic in vision.
But I think my intensive study of Morandi's work over the past five months, learning about and identifying with his ways of working, and then for this project really focusing on the flower paintings, has prepared me for the challenges this chapter presented. I have somehow gotten an internal permission (from Morandi, from myself?) to actually enjoy and trust the process of staging some of the flower pictures. In those images which I staged, I do feel for the most part that I was able to achieve a kind of intuitive inventiveness that makes for the kind of art I personally feel is most respectable and successful. Some of the works even achieved a degree of playfulness; perhaps they are making fun of myself, or the tradition of flower pictures . . . or both.
Regardless of whether or not I staged my subjects, all of the photographs have undergone some degree of transformation: both in the camerawork aspect, searching for the right point of view, the right light, the right cropping and overall composition; and then in the post camera aspect of the process in which I make adjustments and changes from the raw camera-made imagery. After the camera work is done, I feel free to do whatever it takes to get the picture to look "right" to me as a finished object.
My other, earlier flower photographs in the project
In the first five chapters of my Morandi inspired project I made several other flower & plant photographs which I did not include in the collection of images presented below. But I wanted them to be seen in the context of this project as a body of related works, thus I have collected them together on separate page which you can visit at this link: The Other Flower & Plant Photographs.
Morandi's flower paintings are more obviously personal than his other works, it seems to me: they look and feel more intimate and poetic than most of his other works. (fig. 2 below) Perhaps this is in part because of the subject's ties to one of the major classical painting traditions, and perhaps because of their smaller, more intimate scale. (fig. 5 is 9x11 inches) But make no mistake, Morandi's flower paintings are quite unique upon close scrutiny.
One of Morandi's writer friends tells of a meeting with him at his studio where he saw several flower paintings hanging on the walls. He wrote that they were hung in such a way as to give the impression that Morandi never expected anyone other than himself to look at the paintings. It seems Morandi was protective of his flower paintings (he seldom made them available for sale), and we know that he made many of them intended as gifts for his closest friends and admirers as a gesture of his affection or gratitude (he gave flower paintings to many of his collectors, plus writers, critics, art historians, musicologists, etc).
Click on the images to enlarge
Fig. 1 Morandi, Fiori 1920
Fig. 2 Morandi, Fiori 1924
Fig. 3 Morandi, Fiori 1950
Fig. 4 Morandi, Fiori 1952
Fig. 5 Morandi, Fiori 1957
It took me a while to fully appreciate the uniqueness of Morandi's flower paintings; they at first glimpse seemed odd to me, perhaps too quaint and old fashioned in certain ways. I may have been biased against the subject matter, in any case it was only after I carefully studied his entire creative output that I grew to understand and appreciate how Morandi's flower paintings fit into his overarching creative process: I eventually became charmed and even entranced by those that I could see in publication.
I grew to appreciate the simplicity, directness and often the understated inventiveness of the flower paintings which span Morandi's entire career, dating back to 1913. He produced many flower paintings in the 1920s, and in the 1940s, and there was an even greater proliferation of flower paintings in the 1950s.
Unlike his other still life works, which were carefully constructed compositions of forms/objects in relationship to each other, the flower paintings have only a singular subject, usually placed in or near the center of the frame. I feel kindred in spirit to the flower paintings because of their relationship to one of my favorite earlier projects projects begun in 1982 entitled "Thing Centered Photographs."
Multiple issues and influences
The flower paintings seem to have provided Morandi with a more relaxed forum for creative invention. Because he gave them as personal gifts, perhaps he felt permission to experiment with new ideas, or express private, heartfelt emotions that were more difficult to express through his other works.
We can see in his flower paintings how he used this subject to explore new ways of seeing, constructing picture space, and handling paint on the surface of his canvas. In a way, the flower paintings are made with the freedom of a study. I have become especially fascinated by the freedom of his oftentimes restless, vibrant brushstrokes within the backgrounds of the flower paintings, and as usual his struggle to resist in these paintings from moving toward total abstraction.
Morandi would frequently visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where Giotto's enthroned Virgin of the Maesta was displayed. He visited the Maesta repeatedly just to study Giotto's vase of flowers held by each of the angels on either side of the Virgin. I really identify with Morandi's enthusiasm for another artist! I go every day to the several monographs I own of Morandi's work and study the reproductions and texts "religiously" with a deep hunger to imbibe the creative spirit in his work, a creative spirit that I have always felt was intimately part of my own self.
Not only was Giotto an influence on the flower paintings, Renoir was an influence as well. And it is clear that other influences included Piero della Francesca, Cezanne, Picasso and the metaphysical painters. After Morandi died, researchers found in his personal library several books on oriental art that were well worn from his repeated study.
Influences are interesting to contemplate and learn from, however for me the most important thing to acknowledge in Morandi's work is the unique creative vision which he brought to the flower painting tradition.
Staged events, absolute backgrounds, light, color, tones
Of course the flower paintings, like his other still lifes, are staged events. He placed his singular bouquet of flowers (usually in a vase, but not always) in a timeless, mental, clear or pure space which some writers referred to as the "absolute space," or the void. There was usually a single horizon line in the background.
Sometimes he looked down at the flowers from directly above, or he would come very close to the flowers (hiding the vase), or he would crop into the space between the vase and the flowers in surprisingly unexpected ways. In several flower paintings he made use of raw canvas as a border surrounding the painted image. (fig. 5)
The light and atmosphere in the flower paintings cover a full range of qualities: from frontal, to angular, to shadowless; from harsh contrasty light and color relationships, to very soft light and colors in which everything becomes a muted grey, as if covered with a layer of dust . . . (fig. 2) which Maria Bandera (2008) termed Morandi's "ineffable tonal ranges." Marilena Pasquali characterized one flower painting as being pervaded by "a liquid dawn of light, golden as honey."
The space behind the flowers sometimes manifest a powerful visual presence of its own because of the way Morandi applied the paint with his brush to the surface of the canvas, oftentimes with fluidity, and sometimes with what appears to be an intense and rapid urgency. In fact, sometimes the background appears to come forward, toward me, leaving the flowers in the background. (fig. 3 ~ click on the image for a close view)
Fresh Cut, Dried, Silk . . . and plastic flowers
Morandi's earliest flower paintings were of fresh cut flowers, or dried flowers, but as he matured as an artist the use of real flowers, vulnerable to the transience of time, became less of a concern for him. His collection of objects to paint gradually included vases filled with silk flowers. At some point in his creative process it no longer mattered to him whether the flowers were "real" or "alive." In fact Morandi's paintings were never naturalistic; as he matured as an artist he became more and more interested in manifesting a certain essence or presence in his painting that relied more and more on dissolving the appearance of the subject matter. To the extent that his flower paintings are at all about flowers, I would venture to say that he was trying to reveal the archetype essence of flowers, or perhaps even flower painting. That is to say, I think he wanted to manifest a pictorial revelation of a timeless essence or presence associated with the universal subject "flowers." The picture was more important that what appears to be the subject.
I understand this better now that I've explored the world of flower imagery myself in this project. The picture becomes the most important thing; the subject matter is only important because it becomes the means, the point of departure that leads to the picture's essential qualities, or revelations. I have actually come to enjoy photographing plastic flowers and plants: I think it's because the challenge seems all the greater, then, to make an interesting, successful photograph, that is to say an image that transcends its artificial but nonetheless archetypal subject. Perhaps this explains well enough why I have not titled the individual photographs, named the kinds of flowers depicted. Each is a flower picture, and that is enough.
More about the square format
All of my photographs for the Morandi inspired project are made using the square format in a relatively intimate scale (approx. 8x8"). I have written in earlier chapters about the significance of the square format for me. I recently learned that in the early 1950's Morandi made a series of four flower paintings in the square format that became the focus of a fascinating commentary by a close friend of Morandi's, the poet, writer and art historian Francesco Arcangeli (who Morandi, after twenty years of friendship had a falling out with because he so strongly disagreed with his friend's interpretive reading of his work). Arcangeli believed there was an important turning point in Morandi's work in the early 1950's which was directly related to the series of four square-formated flower paintings. (see fig. 4) Here is what Archangeli wrote in his publication Giorgio Morandi [1964]:
Morandi clearly wished to meditate on the 'square composition' and varied the plan, the tones, the arrangements with so much artistic skill that, even if the composition seems unchanging, one cannot easily call either the individual paintings or the entire series 'tout court' classics. It is in fact obvious that a new 'intellectual' approach, even if now realized in tones that appear moderate, and almost always resolved with a fixed frontal light, was developing in his art. . . The [four paintings of 1950-51] where the flowers are placed tranquilly alone within the clear space . . . reacquire something of the mental will and the 'merciless' measure of metaphysics.
* * *
Whatever it takes
Collected here are photographs of flowers and plants which I have made specifically for this chapter of the project. There are basically two types of works: those in which I have photographed my subjects as I found them in their place; and those in which I have staged the subjects, in other words constructed the event which I photographed. I have written before how I would typically feel uncomfortable when I touched and changed my subjects and their environments before making a photograph. The images would feel tainted to me in some way, perhaps not as spontaneously authentic in vision.
But I think my intensive study of Morandi's work over the past five months, learning about and identifying with his ways of working, and then for this project really focusing on the flower paintings, has prepared me for the challenges this chapter presented. I have somehow gotten an internal permission (from Morandi, from myself?) to actually enjoy and trust the process of staging some of the flower pictures. In those images which I staged, I do feel for the most part that I was able to achieve a kind of intuitive inventiveness that makes for the kind of art I personally feel is most respectable and successful. Some of the works even achieved a degree of playfulness; perhaps they are making fun of myself, or the tradition of flower pictures . . . or both.
Regardless of whether or not I staged my subjects, all of the photographs have undergone some degree of transformation: both in the camerawork aspect, searching for the right point of view, the right light, the right cropping and overall composition; and then in the post camera aspect of the process in which I make adjustments and changes from the raw camera-made imagery. After the camera work is done, I feel free to do whatever it takes to get the picture to look "right" to me as a finished object.
My other, earlier flower photographs in the project
In the first five chapters of my Morandi inspired project I made several other flower & plant photographs which I did not include in the collection of images presented below. But I wanted them to be seen in the context of this project as a body of related works, thus I have collected them together on separate page which you can visit at this link: The Other Flower & Plant Photographs.
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The Photographs
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Flowers & Plants
Click on the images to enlarge
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #2
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #3
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #4
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #5
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #6
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #7
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #8
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #9
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #10
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #11
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #12
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #13
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #14
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #15
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #16
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #17
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #18
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #19
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #20
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #21
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #22
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #23
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #24
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #25
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #26
Morandi inspired Still Life photographs, Chapter 6, Flowers & Plants, Image #27
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Image #28: from chapter 7, entitled "Brushstrokes"
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This project was first posted to my Welcome Page January 15, 2014.
Visit:
The Other Morandi Inspired Flower & Plant Photographs
Brushstrokes, Chapter 7
Transformations of Flower & Plant photographs
Still Life ~ Photographs Inspired by Giorgio Morandi
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
"Thing Centered Photographs" 1982
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