The popularity of the TV series “Strategy of Yanxi Palace” last year brought a frenzy of ratings. The exquisite costumes and settings in the drama also attracted the attention of many audiences. The characters and roles have changed from the bright and bright shapes of the palace dramas in the past, with low saturation. On the contrary, the obscurity highlights the elegant and peaceful beauty. Tracing back to its roots, this hue was originally created by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. Borrowing elements of Western art in film and television dramas produced unexpected effects. In fact, Morandi’s popularity on the Internet is by no means a moment. Fashion circles and design circles have long called it a style, which is the “Morandi style” that has been popular today.
Throughout his life are flowers, landscapes, and bottles. How did he maintain this monotonous style for decades and become a family? In the eyes of ordinary people, Morandi’s works are nothing more than trivial everyday objects, which make people feel boring and even incomprehensible at first glance. However, from critics, Morandi’s inadvertent sense of mystery has nothing to do with it. Philippe Jacobs, a great contemporary French poet and art critic prose author, in “The Pilgrim’s Bowl-Poems of Morandi’s Paintings” deliberated the mystery behind those dumb styles, “Morandi is deeply aware To the sorrow of mankind, he is also deeply aware of the possible annihilation of all things. One can imagine the amazing calmness of his paintings, and the same agitation behind this amazing calmness-without this, he would not be burdened to walk so far.”
In the art world where individuality is exaggerated, countless creators have tried their best to paint a refreshing scene on the canvas, with their own unique tricks in color, line, light, and layout. After appreciating the novel and unique and reviewing Morandi’s works, the contrast is very strong. The neatly arranged daily objects are like extremely solemn monuments, resisting the absurdity of life with aloof attitude and silent silence. The color of the fusion of dust and ashes directly refers to the inaction, humbleness and tolerance of life, and even pessimistic disappointment, like The life of an ordinary person buried by the world… If you carefully examine the many emotional sources behind Morandi’s creation, it is not difficult to see that the silence and loneliness conveyed by his works are by no means groundless.
Style, personality
The 18th-century French writer Boufon once put forward the view that “style is human”, that is, the temperament and character of the artist shape the style of the work, that is, “the painting is like a person.” This is derived from Morandi’s experience The obvious proof. The ups and downs of life meshed with his sensitive nerves like gears. The death of brothers and sisters and the death of both parents changed the original life trajectory of a family. Only by picking up a paint brush can we forget the trauma in reality. In the days when he was teaching printmaking at the university, he maintained a two-point and one-line life, shutting himself in the studio when he had time, and it was in that cramped and bleak space that he created an irreplaceable and highly personal artistic style.
Morandi’s paintings always run through flowers, landscapes, and bottles. The paintings are surprisingly calm, and the mystery created inadvertently has a special meaning.
Morandi’s life was like those scenes in his pen, plain to the point of no waves. He has never left his hometown of Bologna in his whole life, only a few trips; he has never had love in his whole life, and he has only devoted everything in art. In the unpredictable 20th century painting scene, more and more works with visual impact are favored by the public and the industry. When contemporary painters rushed to the metropolis, wandering through vanity fairs and social circles such as bars and salons, Morandi was isolated from the world, living in seclusion in his studio, and living a low-key, simple and unwilling life. It is joking that the color series created by this veteran otaku who stayed home half a century ago has become the darling of the fashion industry today. “It has become a highly recognizable symbol in the trend.
So why does such a cold color system break into today’s fast-paced life? This seems to be an antidote that Morandi offered to urbanites—to restore the true colors of life, to soothe tiredness of labor, and to cool down his impetuous temperament. In Bologna where he stayed together all his life, the slow and leisurely pace of life gave him the opportunity to savor the charm of the city and appreciate the beauty of space. After seeing the gentle and elegant tones in the streets and buildings, he laid his sights on the background of the canvas, and the urban imprints he cultivated for a long time shaped his creative mode. Putting aside the complicated and fancy weird themes and techniques, returning to the simplest daily use, exploring a minimalist aesthetic through repeated trials of tones and light.
Artistic creation will inevitably follow the trend, but it can be said that it is difficult to find another way in an uninhabited environment. Not only the acceptance is somewhat questioned, but it will also cause an uproar in the industry. Almost all creators start with classics, Morandi is no exception, from Paul Cezanne, André Derain to Picasso, from Classicism, Impressionism to Post-Impressionism and Cubism. Cezanne has the most profound influence on him. From his attitude towards life to the way of observation, he escapes from carnival vain, enjoys loneliness, but never loneliness; he reflects on foreign objects and integrates them into his thinking to extract order and law.
Compared with those artists who blindly pursue “new and peculiar”, Morandi’s perspective is completely popular. The spatial hierarchical layout of cutting out the complicated and condensed creates an extraordinary aesthetic effect from ordinary scenes, such as the aesthetician Clive Bell What is said, the lines and colors combined in a unique way, the specific form and the relationship between forms stimulate our aesthetic emotions. He called these combinations and relationships of lines and colors, as well as these aesthetically moving forms, as “significant forms”, which is the kind of commonality that all visual art works have. This “significant form” is what Morandi has explored throughout his life, a mysterious temperament that can resonate with most people, without trace, and close to religion.
