Once again, stultifyingly bored at work, googling around art images, I remembered Giorgio Morandi. Not sure of his current status these days (not that it matters a whit) but he was a big favorite of Alton Pickens, my prof at Vassar, someone whom he urged me to study and I did. Doubtless, Morandi became a big influence on my own work, something I see more clearly now than I might have at the time.















Most of his oeuvre consists of very simple still lives, often with the same objects painted over and over, moved slightly, in subtly different lighting conditions. But, of course, not simple at all though I wonder how tough it is to pick up on the tensions and complexities. I find the "aesthetic connection" between work like Morandi's and much current quiet improv to be clear. Sometimes I wonder if analogies made between eai and painting might not be (at least, sometimes) better served by visual work with a foot in the realist camp, though "metaphysical realism" (as Morandi's and similar work is often referred to) is likely more to the point than more traditional forms. For example, much of Rowe's work resonates strongly, to me, with Rauschenberg's combines with their melding of abstraction and brutalist realism (an actual chair, ladder, lamp, etc.)

















Anyway, idle musings for a never-ending morning.