In the NY Times Holland Cotter explains why Giorgio Morandi kept painting, even after his hands became shaky and his eyesight started to fail. “You might ask other artist-poets this question: Joseph Albers, say, or Paul Klee or Agnes Martin or a New York artist I know who sits down at his apartment desk for two hours every day � only two, but always two � to embroider small squares of raw canvas with abstract patterns in silk thread. The work is close, slow and painstaking, done stitch by stitch, row by row � letter by letter, line by line � in calligraphic loops and tufts. An inch of embroidery, approximately the size of a sonnet quatrain, takes months to complete. But the work goes on. Because it is controllable reality. It is a form of thinking that frees up thought. It is time-consuming, but time-slowing, isolating but self-fulfilling. It is a part of life, but also a metaphor for how life should be: with everything in place, every pattern clear, every rhyme exact, every goal near.” Read more.
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Morandi: “I don’t ask for anything except for a bit of peace which is indispensable for me to work.”
