Giorgio Morandi study- an adventure in crosshatching across disciplines

Giorgio Morandi  was an early 20th century printmaker, and I had never heard of him before last Thursday. However, we were assigned to check out some of his drypoint still life etchings, copy one, and follow up with a still life of our own.

This post contains something of a personal adventure for me, as I (eh heh he) cross-hatch some preconceptions, and learn a bit about the art of laboratory work.

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I won't lie. I have never been a fan of still life compositions, either viewing or making. I grew up drawing because I wanted to draw cool armor, fantastical creatures, interesting faces, and tits. Bowls of apples contain none of these things. I also have been less enthused with the drypoint method, wherein one painstakingly scratches a design directly onto a metal plate with a stylus. It's a bit like working with an invisible sharpie that can stab you, really.

So I set about checking out some of Mr. Morandi's still lifes. At first glance, many of them seemed very monotonal and washed out. As someone who pathologically goes for high contrast and salivates over line quality, I was unimpressed. However, I sat down with this still life, and got cracking.

Take a look at the original- except for a few small patches of white in the lower right corner, the entire image is covered with at least one layer of fine parallel lines. The shade intensifies as more marks are added, at roughly diagonal angles. In this way is the entire image composed of layers and layers of delicate straight lines. The artist does not, it appears, inscribe outlines. Looking at this, I realized it was unfamiliar territory for me.

I have noticed a trend in myself, notably involving this kind of Scary New Stuff. Upon entering a situation- say, live model drawing, or impromptu still life- I'll be fairly judgmental about the set up. The poorly hung backdrop sheet, or the unaesthetic planes of a human will be less than inspiring. However, 5 minutes into sketch, I'll be sweating and grasping at the last few minutes before the model switches poses- now,  his or her body is the most beautiful thing I have seen. The way the dingy light sinks into and expands from skin, or the pure, simplistic line from ribcage to heel is something I could never hope to capture completely. And yet, despite encountering this revelation again and again, I always seem to forget.

To dive into and wallow in the details of anything has never disappointed me, be it the intricacies of cell signaling, the development of the first computer, the motion of a human hip joint, or tiny scratches on a metal plate. I'll go out on a limb and get into personal philosophy here- knowledge is never a waste. Ever. Even when you're out surfing Reddit, and you have been looking at pictures of birds with arms for the last two hours, you're learning something. It's not going to be as immediately applicable as, say, doing your damn O-chem homework, but by god you're learning all about how ridiculous birds with human arms look. Maybe this will spur you into a study on cognitive dissonance caused by anthropomorphized animals; maybe you will pick up a new photoshop technique.

I'm going to go out on another limb and suggest that you waste your time somewhat more productively than in the above scenario, but I'm not here to tell you what your priorities are.

Here we are back at the original Morandi etching- scaling back to look at the whole print, I can suddenly see how these orderly, straight, ostensibly boring lines converge to make a complex composition, describing curving shapes and soft shades without ever embodying these traits. I think of the cells sitting in the incubator across the lab from me- all I can see, even under a decent microscope, is the delicate and translucent forms of MCF-7 breast cancer cells, innocuous and vulnerable in their petri dish. To discover what goes on in those cells, I must use convoluted methods to discern cause and effect. I will never witness the mechanics of a biochemical pathway; instead, I attempt to illustrate the process by other means, allowing the slow oxidation of alamar blue dye to describe how many cells are sleeping in a dish, or using overlapped applications of staining proteins to find an elusive target protein.
To me, art and science are so tightly interwoven I could not tear them apart. Every day in the lab, I make tiny scratches, overlapping and parallel, to eventually describe an image- some clue, some lead, as to what goes on in those deadly cells. Sometimes people ask me how I balance "artistic thinking" with "scientific thinking". I just laugh and laugh.

The devil's in the details, I guess. I had a hard time adjusting to making lots of straight lines with a ballpoint pen- often, I would slip back into regular shading, doodling little circles and going over outlines instead of letting the sharp gradient form the boarders of the shape. In the end, I popped out a passable imitation of the original, though clunky in comparison.

Later, I resolved to try and use Morandi's technique to better effect. Setting up a quick still life with some handy tomatoes, I managed to frustrate myself for another hour and a half. In the end, it took a bit of outline- and contrast strengthening for me to accept the final project. 

I'll give it another shot tomorrow, and see where it takes me. 

In the meantime, it's tomatoes for dinner.....