Rachel Whiteread on Giorgio Morandi: another British artist pays tribute to the painter’s selfishness

 

Five years after Tacita Dean, who made two films dedicated to his working desk (Day for night and Still life, 2009), another leading British artist pays a tribute to painter Giorgio Morandi. She is Rachel Whiteread, and the exhibition which sets the dialogue between her and the Italian master is titled “Study for Room” – at the Museo Morandi in Bologna until 8 June. Similar to Morandi, also Rachel Whiteread’s will is to transcend, through an obsessive practice of observation, the subject of the representation, turning it into the art practice itself. Thus, the real subject is not that group of vases, or the interior of a certain room, but the artist himself and the mission which he is devoting his life to.

 

Then, for those who would like to go deeper into Morandi, another exhibition is going to shed some light on this solitary artist – who, from a certain point of view, seems so similar to Francis Bacon. It will take place at the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, in Florence from 1 to 22 June. Titled “Morandi Longhi. Works Letters Writings” it examines the relationship between form and information comparing the works by Morandi with the writings of the great art critic Roberto Longhi as well as letters between the two men.

September 22, 2014