Giorgio Morandi: Not Just Bottles

Abstract

I had just arrived at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice. My eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie, who accompanied me, settled herself on the floor of the first room with her sketchbook and pencil. We had come to look at the exhibition of Giorgio Morandi’s late work, from 1950 to 1964, the year of the artist’s death, and Sophie knew that we were going to be there for a long time. The gallery wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty either, and as I stood in that first room, trying to digest what I was seeing, I heard an exchange between an American couple. The husband, who apparently had entered the gallery through the other door and had come to the first paintings last, looked around him with a somewhat bewildered expression on his face and called to his wife, “More bottles!” From the other room, I heard her answer him in an accusatory voice, “I told you. They’re all the same!”