Giorgio Morandi

Italian Season of Events

Introduction | Visiting information | Biography | Timeline | List of works

Tate Modern has organised a series of talks and films with an Italian theme to coincide its summer season of exhibitions: Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962 - 1972 and Giorgio Morandi

Course

Giorgio Morandi: Silent Spaces

Tutor: Richard Thomas
Four Saturday mornings, 11.00-13.00
16, 23, 30 June and 7 July 2001

Fee £50 (concessions £35)
All bookings can be made by calling Tate Ticketing on 020 7887 8888.
Concessionary rates apply to ES40 cardholders, Senior Citizens, Registered Disabled people and students in full-time education.

The subtle and contemplative paintings of Giorgio Morandi continue to seduce. His work is admired for its simplicity, quietude and determined consistency. At the same time it is celebrated for its complexity, resonance and openness to multiple readings. Morandi is notorious for remaining outside history and politics at a time when Italy was under a fascist regime. Some of his works express an almost existential dimension, where the process of abstraction can be interpreted as a process of disassociation from the world. However, in his defiance of dominant artistic trends, Morandi can also be seen to have developed a unique visual language which anticipated many contemporary concerns and anxieties.

This course offers an opportunity to explore Morandi's working methods, to analyse his imagery and construction of space, to reassess the mythologies that surround him, and to consider his continuing significance for contemporary art. It will include a visit to the Tate Modern exhibition, Giorgio Morandi, discussion with the exhibitions' curators, and demonstrations by practising artists.

16 June
The Artists' Artist
Donna de Salvo, Senior Curator, Tate Modern and co-curator Giorgio Morandi

23 June
Still-life and Stage Set
Jane Elliott, artist

30 June
White Bottle - Red Earth
Dr Matthew Gale, Curator, Tate Collection and co-curator Giorgio Morandi

7 July
The Etchings of Morandi: Drawing Absences
Professor Paul Coldwell, Course Leader, MA Printmaking, Camberwell College of Art

Conferences

Thurs 31 May, 11.00-18.00
The Moment of Arte Povera: Then and Now
Artists featured in the exhibition Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972 have been asked to join curators, critics and other commentators in a day of discussion and presentations about their work and the issues it and the exhibition raises.
Tickets £25 (£15 concessions)

Fri 15 June, 13.30 - 19.30
Sat 16 June, 10.30 - 18.30
Arte Povera: Between Europe and America
This conference brings together speakers from Europe and America to explore Arte Povera in the context of the art and culture of its time. Themes for discussion include: American artists in Italy; Italian artists in America; the different situations in Rome, Turin, Genoa; European connections; the precursors of Arte Povera; the moment of materials (1967); the everyday; natural and artificial; archaic and contemporary; language and materials; the anthropological turn; gender; performance, film, theatre and photography; writing. Speakers include: Tommaso Trini, Frances Morris, Carolyn Cristov-Bakargiev, Cristina Mundici, Bruno Di Marino, Alberto Boatto, Briony Fer, Judith Rossi Kirshner, Karen Pinkus, Maria Teresa Roberto, Alison Sleeman, Francesco Bonami, Nathalie Heinich, Frances Morris, Jon Thompson and Angela Vettesse. Chair Robert Lumley.
Tickets £35 (£25 Concessions)

Films and Videos

A season of films inspired by the Arte Povera exhibition. Tickets £3.50 (£2.00 concessions)

Sunday 10 June, 15.00
L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1960) 145'
A couple go in search of a missing woman who is part of a group of wealthy socialites
on holiday in Sicily. As the search continues the couple, the missing girl's best friend and her lover, develop a romantic interest in one another. The film is starkly shot and dialogue kept to a minimum.

Sunday 17 June, 15.00
An afternoon of Arte Povera films made by Italian artists in the 1960s. Introduced by Bruno Di Marino.

Tuesday 26 June, 18.30
La Chinoise (Jean - Luc Godard, France, 1967) 95'
Godard's response to Maoist teachings, shot predominantly in red, follows the interests of a group of young people inspired by the revolutionary politics of Mao.

Sunday 3 July, 18.30
I Pugni In Tasca (Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 1965) 113'
Bellocchio's first feature is the story of a family coping with blindness, epilepsy and adolescent violence. The film is a brutal attack on Italian bourgeois values

Thursday 5 July, 18.30
Screenings of work by Alfredo Leonardi and Jonas Mekas

Thursday 12 July, 18.30
Screenings of work by Ugo Nespolo and Giosetta Fioroni

Friday 13 July, 18.30
Identifications (Gerry Schum, Italy, 1970) 132'

Saturday 14 July, 15.00
Sleep (Andy Warhol, USA, 1964) 390'

Free Music Events

A collaboration with Richard Bernas and supported by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants

Mon 2 July
19.30 Turbine Hall
Stravinsky Piano Concerto
Nic Hodges piano
Music Projects/London conductor Richard Bernas
Duke Ellington & Stan Tracey Works for Jazz Orchestra
Stan Tracey Band

The first public music event in the Turbine Hall will be an informal, Prom-style concert. Stravinsky's large-scale Piano Concerto echoes the jazz enthusiasm of the 1920s, an aural counterpart to Matisse and Mondrian. The scoring of the Stravinsky, Tracey and Ellington pieces - piano 'fronting' a big wind and brass band - is remarkably similar. Drawing together Paris in the 20s, New York in the 40s and London now - Tate Modern are proud to feature Stan Tracey, the leading British jazz composer of his generation - this is both a 'statement of intent' and an invitation to participate in a new series of events.

Presented in association with Music Projects/London Trust supported by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants Ltd.

Sat 14 July
12.30
Sun 15 July
12.30
In Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962 - 1972 (exhibition ticket required)
Luigi Nono 'Hay Que Caminar' sonando (1989) for two violins
Luigi di Filipi and Miranda Fulleylove

On the wall of a cloister in Toledo Nono found the inscription: "Traveller, there are no ways, but we must go. Dreaming." It became the motto for his last works which, though they are far from the Arte Povera movement chronologically, are close to them in attitude. This extended meditation for two violins is based on the scala enigmatica from Verdi's Ave Maria (Four Sacred Pieces).

Sat 14 July
14.00 - 17.00
In Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962 - 1972 (exhibition ticket required)
Luciano Berio Four Sequenzas
London Sinfonietta Soloists

These short, quasi-theatrical works rely on a tension between a solo player and the extreme virtuosity demanded of them. The selected Sequenzas date from Berio's most fruitful period, the 1960s. As a compliment to the Arte Povera exhibition, the London Sinfonietta Soloists (many of whom have worked with the composer) will be located within the exhibition space as a rotating concert.

Sun 15 July
14.00, 15.15, 16.30
Turbine Hall
Luigi Nono La Fabrica Illuminata (1964) soprano and tape
Sarah Leonard soprano

This extraordinary piece reflects the social preoccupations of its time; its sonic raw material are the sounds of a factory. Nono transforms them into a complex web of associations, political, social and poetic, and comments on the lives of factory labourers by means of a dramatic and incandescent soprano solo.