In 2016 there was an exhibit at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York. I remember being very moved by my visit there. In order to see the exhibit you had to make an appointment and then take a tour with a Morandi scholar. I wanted to go and look at the work on my own and resist the rules. But in fact it was lovely. After we arrived they served us espresso in tiny cups with Pantone colors printed on the sides in a room full of photographs by Joel Meyerowitz of Morandi's objects and studio. In the offices there were Tacita Dean's photos of Morandi's pencil marks on fragile brown paper that covered his table where he arranged his still lives. The coffee, the talk, the photos, the paintings--each component made it possible to more fully understand Morandi's poetic vision. Today as I cleaned bottles from the anagama I had imaginary conversations with Morandi about bottles and boxes, marks, angles of light, over lapping objects and table edges.
"Gioni singled out "this refusal of an idea of time that is married to
production" that he found in Dean's work. He incisively explained that
the demand that Tacita Dean or Giorgio Morandi makes of you is to slow
down, to look attentively, to abandon yourself. In his eyes, it makes
the work particularly radical. In an age today when time is compressed
and accelerated, to slow down and look is the most radical thing you can
do. Dean echoed this sentiment, explaining that it is harder to
daydream now, which is as an active state lost to us today, since we are
so attached to our devices and phones. "I regret those periods of
emptiness that were so nourishing when I was young," she told the
audience at CIMA."
Excerpt from https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/arts/2016/04/19/tacita-deans-still-life-the-artist-his-studio/
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