The Intimate and the Universal: Part Five of Eight
Morandi was a private artist working in a storage room off his mother's kitchen. His subjects were solely the bottles and vessels he meticulously arranged for his painting. His drawing reflects the care he took to compose the forms-each blocked into an area tightly packed, grid-like. Each less a bottle than a geometric abstracted form.
Like Morandi, Mondrian limited his subject matter. For Mondrian, the vertical and horizontal lines he likened to the way we stand in our environment and landscape that spreads out horizontally. He uses the same geometric abstract forms to populate his drawing.
What strikes me is that I would be hard pressed to say which of the two makes a universal statement and which makes an intimate one just looking at the preparatory drawings. And that is the point.
Like Morandi, Mondrian limited his subject matter. For Mondrian, the vertical and horizontal lines he likened to the way we stand in our environment and landscape that spreads out horizontally. He uses the same geometric abstract forms to populate his drawing.
What strikes me is that I would be hard pressed to say which of the two makes a universal statement and which makes an intimate one just looking at the preparatory drawings. And that is the point.
While the paintings are dissimilar obviously in color and technique, both paintings use a grid to position their objects. In each, the color planes lie at the very surface of the canvas -there isn't space created in the classical way. Looking at the paintings the distinction between the intimate and the universal becomes apparent.
Morandi's poor bottles are literally clamped into the center of the painting by the background and foreground shapes. They are isolated - only the small white jar looks like it could break away. In many ways that painting reflects his private life.
Limiting his colors to the primaries and black and white, and using only perpendicular black vertical and horizontal lines Mondrian employed a style based on a reduction of painting itself- a painting is a flat surface, the edges determine the interior structure, The colors are only flat red, yellow and blue, composition is the combination balance of these elements. With this rubric he believed is painting spoke of a universal and harmonious truth.
By seeing how both artists start their journey led me to understand that the artist who is truly drawing upon the personal can create a statement that can speak towards a universal one just as the artist who succeeds in making a universal statement can also make a very personal one.
Within the personal then lies the universal, within the universal lies the personal. Losing track of that duality, the artist risks making work either wallpaper or navel gazing.
Morandi's poor bottles are literally clamped into the center of the painting by the background and foreground shapes. They are isolated - only the small white jar looks like it could break away. In many ways that painting reflects his private life.
Limiting his colors to the primaries and black and white, and using only perpendicular black vertical and horizontal lines Mondrian employed a style based on a reduction of painting itself- a painting is a flat surface, the edges determine the interior structure, The colors are only flat red, yellow and blue, composition is the combination balance of these elements. With this rubric he believed is painting spoke of a universal and harmonious truth.
By seeing how both artists start their journey led me to understand that the artist who is truly drawing upon the personal can create a statement that can speak towards a universal one just as the artist who succeeds in making a universal statement can also make a very personal one.
Within the personal then lies the universal, within the universal lies the personal. Losing track of that duality, the artist risks making work either wallpaper or navel gazing.