Morandi was a Fascist, so...?
February '25 Newsletter: Which conviction wins out?
There's currently an exhibition at David Zwirner on 20th Street in New York devoted to the work of the Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi. The works are selected from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation by Dr. Alice Ensabella. Within the show, you'll see works from the very beginning of Morandi's career, as he tried to emulate the work of De Chirico, to his expressions of love for Chardin and Cezanne, to finally arriving at his mature work, where palette, composition, and brushwork all coalesce to form what we now know as a typical "Morandi."
The show aims to place the arc of Morandi's career as a profoundly singular one that idiosyncratically asserts the problems and concerns of Modernism. I wandered through the show with a friend and we both marveled at the Museum-like hanging and the odd moments of artistic emulation that humanized Morandi into a person who actually grew up and tried things and failed, and persisted, rather than the Metaphysical beacon of painting that he is sometimes cast as.
Then we started looking at the dates of the works - 1942, 1948 and onwards - and we both realized he was painting during World War II. Of course our first thought was a charitable one, where we began to look at works with an eye towards the human drama that was playing out on the world's stage.
For instance, we saw this Still Life from 1948 and noticed that all the vessels were at the corner of the table, at the edge, as it were. They were huddled together in a reasonably precarious position. We couldn't help but think that perhaps the war had affected his psyche, and that even in the placidity of a still life, the world's anxiety could still be felt and rendered. After our empathetic musings, we decided to Google Morandi and World War II and it turned out that Morandi wasn't a victim, so much as a willing participant.
“The great faith I have had in fascism from the outset has remained intact even in the darkest and stormiest of days.”
Morandi wasn't an openly violent, hateful fascist, but he was a fascist. That quote was from 1928 when he was still finding his way as an artist. Many have written that Morandi wasn't so much a fascist as he was a careerist, and that his allegiances were merely to make sure he could guarantee himself a position at the University, but there is no evidence to suggest that he withdrew his support or even reconsidered his past decisions. Many have also written about Morandi's connections to a nostalgic view of Italy and to the fascistic aesthetic movement in Italy called the Strappaese. Mariana Aguirre's piece "Morandi and the Return to Order" is particularly good in charting this sequence of events, but my interest in addressing Morandi's fascism is more so to interrogate our current feelings about the work in light of that knowledge.
Some considered the work as a oeuvre devoid of people and therefore devoid of life, reading his faith in fascism into the work after the fact, only to confirm their newly discovered suspicions. This feels only partially true, if at all. One can certainly make the case that there is a sense of nostalgia for an older way of life, for a return to simpler times, but that doesn't exhaust the allure of Morandi's work. There is more.
The chief art critic from London's The Spectator, Laura Gasgoine, noted that "[o]ther artists’ still lifes may be showier, but none are as companionable as Giorgio Morandi’s." I like this word, "companionable." It's apt. The work has a clear point of view, but not one that will start violent arguments. It's quiet but a closer look reveals jittery but assured brushwork. They're seemingly grounded and of this world, but there are also so many decisions that fly in the face of depiction. Look at this later work from 1963.
The brushwork creates volume, but the forms also feel a bit lazy and disheveled, as if age has pushed them into resignation and so they wobble, crumple. Foreground and background merge through warm, gray clay tones, and now the sandy coral band to the right feels more like a needed balance than a representation. The spaces between the vessels are defined by a muted cornflower blue - the shaded region of a larger form -but assert themselves as powerfully as the surrounding whitish pots. The paintings are like great short stories. They are formally understated but rich. They create feelings of extreme grandeur without much pomp, transcendence without any whiff of religion. They appear simple and uncomplicated, but try making a facsimile of a Morandi and you'll see how magically calibrated they are. Read a George Saunders short story and the feeling is similar - a matter of factness that leaves you anywhere besides a simple matter of fact.
The idea that these concerns appear to be connected to the larger and future concerns of the Modernists would feel almost like a market ploy were it not for how many artists cite Morandi as an influence. The fact that they also happen to share space with the aesthetic values of a particular thread of fascism is another part of this story, but one that can't be resolved so simply because there is too much good faith in the work itself. There is too much devotion and conviction. He grew into this methodology and then never left it. Even after the war ended, he didn't started painting figures or pets. He maintained his vision.
Today, there are those who might toy with fascism as a way to be contrarian, as a way to signify the failures of the left more broadly, but there is no conviction, no faith, no love or heart. Youth is its primary engine. And after you lose that, those figures tend to fade away. The only certainty is that you too will age and die. And searching for what's true is simply more valuable than finding what makes you feel right or powerful.
Morandi was certainly a careerist. He was a fascist too. He was a brilliant painter also. He was celibate and lived with his three sisters. We can list facts about a person that do not tell us or resolve for us their overall attachments and affiliations, but when you have left behind a trove of unresolvable gems, the puzzle you leave isn't just the work itself, it's how we are supposed to live with it.