by Jon Lackman | 14 November 2008 | Uncategorized
In a Chronicle of Higher Education blog, Laurie Fendrich writes:
… I stopped by the Met last week (as I’ve said, the pleasure of $60 Met membership is that you can do drop-ins) to check out the current Morandi exhibition, up through December 14th.
I’m happy to report that Morandi is still great. Go see his paintings if you’re in New York over the holidays.
But I’m sorry to report that when looking at these Morandis, you have the right to know something that I found out only about five years ago — something that won’t be found on any of the wall plaques at the Met. Morandi was a fascist sympathizer. He’s on record expressing his delight that Il Duce himself purchased a painting, and he noted that his great faith in fascism “from the outset” stayed with him “even in the darkest and stormiest of days.”
I leave it to scholars to document the extent to which Morandi was a fascist (was he “merely” a sympathizer?), but it’s interesting that artists, unlike writers, always get a free ride when it comes to moral condemnation for bad behavior. No art historian I’ve encountered seems to give a damn that Caravaggio killed a man. In fact, they’ve always seemed to relish the delight in surprising their audience with this fact.
