'Purely Personal Modesty, Shyness and Asceticism'

I borrowed Edouard Roditi’s Dialogues on Art (Horizon Press, 1961) from the library mostly to read his interview with Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), the painter whose work I would most like to own, if I ever had the money. Though he painted some landscapes, Morandi concentrated on still lifes (natura morta) devoted to the humblest of objects – vases, bottles, cups, bowls, jugs and boxes; on rare occasions, flowers or fruit but never people. His typical palette is narrow and muted – pale yellows, beige, light gray. Unlike many interviewees, Morandi shuns self-promotion. Like his paintings he is modest and straightforward. He gives the impression of hiding nothing while remaining diffident. He is less evasive than genuinely humble and never wishes to say more or less than he intends:

“I have always avoided suggesting any metaphysical implications. I suppose I remain, in that respect, a believer in Art for Art’s sake rather than in Art for the sake of religion, of social justice or of national glory. Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself.”

Roditi then asks if he disapproves of such painters as Rouault, Renato Guttuso and Mario Sironi. Morandi replies, not taking the bait: “I have never devoted any thought to this kind of problem and have never set out to illustrate anything at all programmatic in my work.”

Another interesting observation from Morandi: “I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all that we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. Only we can know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree.”

In his introduction, Roditi describes Morandi as possessing a “touch of purely personal modesty, shyness and asceticism,” and adds: “Like the French Impressionists, he remains committed to the standards and tastes of a stable middle-class, a firm believer in the aurea mediocritus of the poet Horace.” The Horatian tag, “the golden mean,” is from the fifth line of Ode 2.10, flanking quisquis (“whoever”). David Ferry translates the line as “That man does best / Who chooses the middle way.”

In a brief passage following the interview, Roditi says he is reminded of another passage from Horace: Integer vitae scelerisque purus. Roughly: “The man who is pure in his way of life / And is uninjured by wickedness.” This is the first line of Ode 1.22.  Here is David Ferry’s translation of the first stanza:  

“The upright man whose conscience is perfectly clear

Can journey anywhere, unarmed, untroubled,

Whether it be the burning sands of Sidra,

Near where the quicksand waits for you under the sea . . .”