Luo: Which literati painters?
Morandi?
Gao: For instance, the Four Monks all painted very ordinary things around them such as squashes, vegetables, lotus flowers, and birds. The things Morandi collected were very normal, part of ordinary life.
Gao: Yes. His artworks are very important in terms of the ontology of art. Of course, he is also conceptual. I think that he is a rather successful modern artist in this regard. For instance, most people focus on the color, forms, and linguistic rendering of the bottles, but through these, you discover that his concepts are connected to his religious faith. He was a very pious Catholic. He went to mass every Sunday. He lived a simple life, like that of a monk. Gao: Yes, but because of their different religions and worldviews, their starting points and resulting expressions were different. Morandi was more directed at God in the sky. China’s monastic painters were connected to Daoism and Zen, aimed more at nature, the fusion between man and nature, or the wanderings of the individual. Morandi’s painting was aimed directly at God. These were highly religious paintings for modernism. Luo: This is a lot like the traditional monastic painters of China.
Luo: We can also see from Morandi’s living arrangements that he led a very simple life.
Gao: It was very simple, even for his three sisters. I have gone through their closets, and none of them owned a single brightly- FRORUHGGUHVV)HZSHRSOHYLVLWKLVROGKRPHDQG,ZDVWKH¿UVW Chinese person to do so; I may be the last as well (laughs). The house was very simple, no different from that of your average farmer. When he built this house in 1956, however, he was already a very rich man. He could have lived a very luxurious life. He had no material desires at all. When Museo Morandi was sifting through his library, they found many blank checks among his books. These were given by the buyers of his paintings. He could ¿OOWKHVHFKHFNVRXWKRZHYHUKHSOHDVHGZLWKLQFHUWDLQOLPLWVDQG redeem them immediately, but he was using them as bookmarks (laughs). Luo: Within Catholic ascetic traditions, there is the belief that simplicity is wealth. The simpler your external life, the richer your inner life. Gao: His later studio was a bit bigger, but it was still only 40 square meters. His earlier home in Bologna was only nine square meters, including his studio. His material life was very simple, but he enjoyed great spiritual wealth.
Luo: Did he carefully collect those bottles?
Gao: He did. He personally purchased over a hundred bottles and jars. When he brought them home, he would sometimes treat them. For instance, he would take a chocolate jar, and treat it according to the color he wanted, perhaps painting it white, blue, or brown.
Luo: Were those bottles from his own time, or were they antiques?
Gao: They were quite normal, water jugs and chocolate jars.
Luo: Let’s get back to your artworks. I think that your art has a certain Eastern quality.
/XR 7KLVLVTXLWHGLIIHUHQWIURP&KLQHVHOLWHUDWL/LWHUDWL¿JXUHV had a tradition of collecting various types of vessels, such as porcelain vases and bronze vessels, and they cared a lot about their eras and origins. Gao: I think that Morandi was actually a lot like Chinese literati painters. Some of the more refined literati painters paid much attention to the mundane, discovering truths within ordinary things. This is quite like Zen.
Gao: Thank you for that compliment (laughs). To me, that is quite a compliment. As a student and later as an artist, I have visited many Western countries, and I gradually came to understand that I must seek out inspiration from Eastern traditional ideas or aesthetics in order to create artworks with originality.
186
187
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker