Looking at Grinblatt
In the latest itineration of his long series Uses of Photography, whose purpose is to revisit the modes of perception enabled by the camera, the photographer par excellence Julio Grinblatt betrays the discipline and engages with the pictorial tradition of the still life. Looking at Morandi is a series of works in which he routinely presents (not represents) bottles, just as the Bolognese painter Giorgio Morandi did in his paintings.
He presents them because they are photograms. In these works, the image is produced by the direct action of light on photosensitive surfaces, without the use of a camera. The objects—in this case, the bottles—interfere with the paper, creating a trace, an index, by blocking the path of light.
Looking at Morandi thus constitutes a double challenge to photographic tradition, as well as a profound reflection upon it. In the eternal Oedipal relationship between photography and painting, Grinblatt proposes a disciplinary twist in which he appropriates both, as a rebellious son would. By choosing the still life, the pieces inscribe themselves in the artistic tradition of painting, specifically in the genre that led Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris toward the rupture of representation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Explored to exhaustion from Paul Cézanne to Emilio Pettoruti, the still life returns to order with Morandi, who restores representation, yet never abandons formal exploration.
Photography, of course, played a key role in the development of the avant-gardes: it kills its father, painting, by stealing its role of representation of reality, since it could do so better and automatically. But Grinblatt challenges not only the grandfather (painting) but also the father (photography), and in this series he uses the photogram, the “simpleton child” of photography—its technique much more rudimentary—yet the only one that fully accomplishes the photographic goal of truth: light and objects “paint” the surface with a direct index, providing real proof of presence.
Finally, in choosing Morandi, an artist who painted bottles almost exclusively for years, tirelessly exploring the possibilities of color and form, Grinblatt chooses the anti-genius of painting. In particular—and as a good photographer—Grinblatt was fascinated by Morandi’s etchings, in which light constitutes volume. In his obsessive repetition, Morandi chose intimacy, discipline, meditation, and simplicity, avoiding grand narratives yet producing absolute and forceful works.
In the same way, Grinblatt’s artistic project follows a methodical procedure and a humble subject matter, yet with a politically powerful objective. With this series, Grinblatt seeks to stimulate perception without message, at a historical moment when communication has been annulled by information overload and has become impossible. In the simple act of observing the trace of light upon these bottles, Grinblatt proposes images that are not merely beautiful, but that allow us to think for ourselves.
Aimé Iglesias Lukin
August 2019
