Morandi focused on the object, on the relationship of an object to light, striving for the perfect balance. He was a process oriented artist. The actual paintings went quickly, once he sat down to paint. He spent his time collecting, preparing, and arranging the objects that appeared in his still lifes. He lived with his mother, his three sisters, and he never married. Larry D’Amico, a Hudson Valley artist, finds in Morandi’s paintings “a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all.” The objects, bottles and such, were a cast of characters, an “object family.” The same yellow bottle appears over the years in various paintings, for instance, and a white vase, and a specific sugar bowl. Larry D’Amico asks, “Why is the lid of this tin very slightly open, in a group where all the objects are facing in the same direction, as if it were confiding something about the others in a whisper?” In one still life from 1960, the five objects huddle closely together as if frightened of something. Morandi would sometimes paint the objects themselves before “painting” them—to obscure labels, change colors, and add texture via brush strokes. He interacted with the objects as if he was not just an artist, but an artisan. You can see Cézanne’s influence in terms of color, the flat colors. Morandi captured emotion in the relationship between the objects. There is a tension between objects and colors—a muted palette, with pops of color. In his studio, he kept tables and shelves of different heights on which to arrange objects, to view them from different angles and positions. He smoked Phillip Morris cigarettes, and kept horse chestnuts in his pockets, out of superstition.
-Morgan English