Master of the Month #29 - Sept/Oct 2006 (Amedeo Modigliani)

[Rosic]

Welcome to the 29th installment of the Master of the Month project. We will be studying the master artist, Amedeo Modigliani. We hope you join us in celebrating this artist by painting one (or both) of the paintings selected for this project or by painting one (or both) of the reference images in this Master's style. We have a surprise BONUS in this installment to spice things up a bit...

Please join us as we look forward to sharing our renditions and thoughts on this great artist. A fun and educational time to be had for sure!

Bernie


MOM #29... Sept/Oct - Amedeo Modigliani

Your Choices:

Painting #1...
Study for The Cellist. 1909.
Figure

Click here for Med-Res Image of this painting...

Painting #2...
Landscape. 1919
Landscape

Click here for Med-Res Image of this painting...

Reference Image #1...
Irish Harp by Maffet from Reference Image Library

Click here for Med-Res Image...

Reference Image #2...
Portmeirion by Ceiliog from Image Reference Library

Click here for Hi-Res Image...


Added BONUS:
Cover any one of the many nudes that Modigliani painted...
Please include an image of the original along with the title of the painting you are covering. A good selection of Modigliani's nude paintings can be found here:
http://www.mystudios.com/gallery/mod...-arm-1917.html
http://www.dozenlilacs.com/nudes-center.htm
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/modigliani/modigliani.html

[Rosic]

"You are not alive unless you know you are living."-written on the wall of one of Modigliani's studios



Amedeo "Modi" Modigliani
1884 ~ 1920



Self Portrait




Biography...

"Amedeo Modigliani was the bohemian artist par excellence - his posthumous legend is almost as famous as Van Gogh's. In stylistic terms he was an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists, but not part of their movement, he forms a bridge between the generation of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art Deco painters of the 1920s.
"He was born in Livorno in July 1884. Both sides of his family were Sephardic Jews. His father Flaminio was an unsuccessful entrepreneur who had a small money-changing business, and his mother, Eugenia, by far the stronger personality of the two, ran an experimental school. Amedeo, in childhood nicknamed Dedo, was their fourth and youngest child. Thanks largely to Eugenia Modigliani, the atmosphere of the household was always unconventional; in 1898 the eldest son, Emmanuele, then aged twenty-six, was sentenced to six months imprisonment as an anarchist.

"In 1898 Modigliani began formal art training under Guglielmo Micheli, a pupil of Giovanni Fattori, the leader of the Macchiaioli - the Italian equivalent of the Impressionist movement. To begin with, Modigliani's literary tastes were more advanced than his artistic ones: his favourite poet was Lautréamont, author of Maldoror, who was later to have immense significance for the Surrealists. He left home and went to Florence, where in May 1902 he registered under Fattori at the Scuola Libera di Nudo (Free School of the Nude). In March 1903 he transferred himself to Venice, where he registered at a similar academy. There he met two of the artists who were to be among the leaders of Futurism Umberto Boccioni and Ardengo Soffici. More important, he had his first real introduction to the pleasures of drugs and drink.

"In the winter of 1906 he decided to go to Paris, and his mother agreed to give him a small allowance. The Paris which attracted him was already fading into the past, and he seems to have been rather wary of the new generation of experimentalists which gathered round Apollinaire, though he did go to live in Montmartre, which was at that time undoubtedly the focal point of the avant-garde. Thanks to French anti-semitism (of a sort which at that time was almost unknown in his native Italy) he discovered a much stronger sense of Jewish identity, and his friends in the Paris art world were mainly Jewish. They included Soutine, Kisling, the sculptor Lipchitz and the poet Max Jacob - his one real link with the circle around Picasso. He rapidly made a reputation for his excesses (he had a habit of stripping stark naked when drunk), and his nickname changed from the childish Dedo to Modi (a pun on the French maudit, or 'accursed'). In 1909 he retired for a while to Livorno, sick and exhausted.

"When he returned, now settling in Montparnasse, the new artists' quarter, he decided to change direction, and became a sculptor. The master he chose was Brancusi, and there is a definite link between his work and Brancusi's in this medium. There are also clear signs of influence from the art from Africa and Oceania which Modigliani saw in the Musée de l'Homme. Though he was closer to finding his artistic direction, he was still miserably poor - his sculpture was made mostly from stone stolen from building sites, easy to find as Paris was then in the grip of a building boom. In 1912 he once again fell ill, and was forced to go home for a rest. But it never seems to have occurred to him to remain in Italy; he returned to Paris as soon as he could.

"What stopped him carving, and led to the final phase in his work, was the outbreak of the First World War. This brought the building boom to an abrupt halt; Modigliani in any case was no longer feeling strong enough for the hard physical labour of shaping blocks of stone. When he painted it had always been directly from the motif, and now he became a specialist in portraits whose delicate stylization showed the influence of his period as a sculptor, and whose elegance and wit belied his reputation for uncouth behaviour. Some of his acquaintances thought that the uncouthness was a little cultivated - Picasso said sarcastically: 'It's odd but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre and the boulevard Raspail.'

"In the early years of the war Modigliani embarked on an affair with the South African writer Beatrice Hastings. She was some five years older than he was (he was now thirty), and had had a picturesque career. One of her previous conquests had been Katherine Mansfield. She had a little money, and Modigliani was able to live in more comfortable circumstances. But the relationship was marked by heavy drinking and Modigliani and Beatrice often came to blows - on one occasion he threw her out of a window.

"From a professional point of view he was doing a little better -the ambitious young dealer Paul Guillaume was starting to take an interest in his work. But, as a portrait shows very clearly, Modigliani found Guillaume's personality unsympathetic, and in 1916 he transferred his allegiance to the Polish dealer Zborowski.

"Modigliani's affair with Beatrice Hastings was now over. He had been doing some drawing at the Académie Colarossi, and here, in July 1917, he met Jeanne Hébuterne, who was then aged nineteen. Soon they were living together. Their public scenes became even more famous in Montmartre than Modigliani's rows with Beatrice. One eye-witness, André Salmon, reports:

He was dragging her along by an arm, gripping her frail wrist, tugging at one or another of her long braids of hair, and only letting go of her for a moment to send her crashing against the railings of the Luxembourg. He was like a madman, crazy with savage hatred.

"Yet some - though not all - of Modigliani's many portraits of Jeanne show real tenderness; others show her as impassive and curiously graceless.



By early 1918 conditions in Paris had become so difficult that Zborowski decided to move his whole stable to the South of France - he now represented Soutine, Kisling and the Japanese artist Foujita, as well as Modigliani. Modigliani settled obediently in Nice, but the Mediterranean climate and landscape had no real appeal for him. He continued to paint portraits indoors, often of local shopkeepers and their children. In February 1918 Jeanne became pregnant, and soon afterwards she and Modigliani separated for a while, probably because he loathed her disapproving and overbearing mother who had also moved South. They were reunited before the baby, a daughter, was born. Modigliani got drunk on the way to register the child as his own, and she remained officially fatherless, though she was later adopted by his family in Italy. In May 1919 he returned joyfully to Paris, the only environment he really liked. Jeanne, for the moment, was left behind, pregnant for a second time.
"Thanks to Zborowski's efforts, Modigliani's paintings were at last starting to fetch respectable prices. In the summer of 1919, with the help of Osbert Sitwell, Zborowski arranged a show of French art at the Mansard Gallery in London. It was a success, and it was one of Modigliani's works which fetched the highest price. The purchaser was the writer Arnold Bennett, who said that the painting reminded him of his own heroines. In June 1919 Modigliani and Jeanne were able to move into their first real home, an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière, immediately above one which had once been occupied by Gauguin. But Modigliani's health was steadily deteriorating and his alcoholic collapses were becoming more frequent. He celebrated the New Year of 1920 in fine style, but about a fortnight later was stricken with pains in his kidneys and took to his bed. After some days his neighbour downstairs, another painter called Ortiz de Zarate, called in to see if anything was the matter. He found Modigliani delirious, complaining of a violent headache. The bed was strewn with empty bottles and half-opened cans of sardines which were dripping their oil on to the coverlet. Beside him sat Jeanne, who was nearly nine months pregnant; she had not thought of sending for a doctor. Ortiz de Zarate summoned one immediately. He came, and declared the case was hopeless: Modigliani was suffering from tubercular meningitis. He died on 24 January 1920, without regaining consciousness. There was an enormous funeral, attended by the whole of Montmartre. Jeanne, who had been taken to her parents' house, threw herself out of a fifth floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing both herself and her unborn child."

- From Edward Lucie-Smith, "Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists"

Biography source: http://artchive.com/artchive/M/modigliani.html

[Rosic]

Great article about Modigliani from the Royal Academy of Arts magazine... Summer 2006

Naked Ambition: Amedeo Modigliani’s sensuous nudes and portraits are as captivating as the artist’s legendary life story, argues Kenneth Wayne.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) has a reputation as a tragic figure: a handsome womaniser who was consumed by alcohol and drugs, and who died young, poor, and relatively unknown. But legends sometimes lie. From the evidence available, Modigliani appears to have been a serious and ambitious artist who, although he only had one solo show in his lifetime, exhibited widely in group shows, was supported by at least two loyal dealers in Paris, was recognised by his peers and enjoyed moderate success. His bourgeois Italian Jewish background meant he was both an insider and an outsider. It gave him cultural references spanning the history of art, literature and religion that made him a model citizen of Montparnasse – the avant-garde Paris enclave that artist Marcel Duchamp called ‘the first really international group of artists that we ever had.’

In the first decades of the twentieth century, this square mile of the Left Bank seemed magically to transform the creative people who lived there, inspiring them to make work that extended beyond boundaries. Artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz and Piet Mondrian saw their style mature quickly and inevitably towards Modernism . One could state, only partly in jest, that the address of a given artist indicated the level of modernity contained in his or her work: the closer to the Café du Dome in the centre of Montparnasse, the more modern the work. Modigliani lived in the heart of it, moving there from Montmartre in 1908–9, after arriving in Paris from Italy in 1906. He became closely identified with this area for the rest of his life.

Born in the melting pot city of Livorno in Tuscany, which, as an international trading port, included communities of Englishmen, Greeks, Moroccans and Jews, Modigliani was cosmopolitan to the core. His once wealthy Sephardic Jewish family claimed descent from the philosopher Spinoza and played a prominent role in public life. His father had been a business man, his brother was a socialist MP who later fell foul of Mussolini, and a cousin was a director of the Brera Gallery in Milan. His French-born mother raised him to be trilingual and nurtured his early love of art. When he suffered from tuberculosis in his teens, she took him on a Grand Tour of southern Italy to recuperate, visiting the famous sights of Naples, Rome and Florence where he gained his first appreciation of the great art of the Italian Renaissance, especially that of his fellow Tuscans, Giotto and Botticelli.

Livorno had been a renowned centre for Jews ever since the Medici had invited them to live there and gave them equal rights with other citizens so that they would contribute to its international commercial activity. Unlike other cities in Italy and Europe, Livorno did not have a ghetto and before World War Two, it contained the second largest community of Jews in Italy after Rome, and the second largest synagogue in Europe after the one in Amsterdam.

Modigliani’s Jewish heritage was very important to him personally and artistically. He referred to himself as a Jewish artist according to both his first patron Paul Alexandre and his dealer Paul Guillaume. But what does this mean? First, it seems to have meant to him that it was possible to be both a Jew and an artist. There had not been many Jewish artists both because of the Old Testament edict against making graven images and the anti-Semitism which had kept Jews out of academies and guilds in Europe for centuries. Camille Pissarro was the only famous Jewish artist to precede him. Modigliani’s dedication to his Jewish heritage was evident in his art, and, among other things, he drew mystical Jewish symbols on his drawings.

Modigliani portrayed a large number of Jews in his works and their names, written directly on the canvas, would have made them instantly recognisable as Jews: Adolphe Basler, Leon Indenbaum and Moise Kisling. He also wrote the names of non-Jewish sitters on the canvas, famously Picasso and Guillaume. It is as if he wanted to say they were all equal in the eyes of art and to celebrate the Jewish community in Paris and their contribution to contemporary culture. His self-confidence might have been a result of his upbringing as both a practising Jew and prominent member of society – he saw no reason to hide who he was. It might also have been a reaction to his first encounters with anti-Semitism in Paris and a gesture of solidarity with Jewish émigrés from Eastern Europe, such as artists Chaim Soutine and Jacques Lipchitz.

Upon arriving in Paris, Modigliani visited the museums and galleries there, voraciously absorbing inspiration from ever more wide-ranging sources: African, Cycladic, Oceanic, and Gothic art, not to mention Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cubism and Fauvism. African elements can be discerned in his portraits’ elongated faces and noses, angular forms, as well as their empty eyes, which one finds in African masks. This non-Western influence, which he would have called primitive, can be seen in paintings such as his double portrait of Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz and the portrait of Oscar Meistchaninoff.

Modigliani painted everyone close to him, from his patrons and dealers, Paul Alexandre, Paul Guillaume and Leopold Zborowski who sustained him, to friends from his bohemian circle in Montparnasse, including Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob. It seems Modigliani knew he was living in a special time and place and he wanted to record his group for posterity, much as Man Ray did in his photographs in the 1920s and ’30s. Sociable and intellectually curious, he connected with the other leading creative spirits of his day through his art.

Recent writers have asserted that Modigliani and Picasso were like oil and water. But this is untrue. They exhibited together on numerous occasions such as the 1919 Mansard Gallery exhibition in London and socialised together at Montparnasse haunts such as the Café de la Rotonde, the Dôme and the Closerie des Lilas. In addition, he made portraits of Picasso in painting and pencil. But Modigliani tried to be his own person artistically. What prevented Modigliani from becoming a card-carrying Cubist was most likely his love of Italian Renaissance portraiture and his commitment to being a Jewish artist. However, critics at the time had a liberal definition of Cubism – considering it to be anything non-naturalistic – and sometimes viewed him as part of that group. His inclusion in the famous ‘Salle des Cubistes’ in the 1912 Salon d’Automne undoubtedly reinforced this notion.


In the various accounts we have of Modigliani, he is portrayed as a womaniser, and he clearly had a wide range of amorous liaisons, including one with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. But he had two principal lovers: Beatrice Hastings (1879–1943), who was five years older than him, and Jeanne Hébuterne (1898–1920), who was fourteen years younger. Modigliani painted many portraits of both women, and each is represented in the RA exhibition. They both ultimately committed suicide after Modigliani’s own demise, which has contributed to the myth of Modigliani as a cursed artist. Beatrice Hastings was an independently wealthy writer and poet, born in London, raised in South Africa and based in Paris. Hastings was with Modigliani from 1914 to 1916, the years when his signature style developed, and she wrote about him regularly for The New Age literary magazine, in letters from Paris that charted her relationship with a tempestuous avant-garde artist. It is clear that their relationship was turbulent; they drank and fought and ultimately she left him for another artist. His early portraits of her are sweet and gentle, but they become increasingly angular. Her eyes become blanked out (in a manner now seen as typical of the artist), as though he is making a distance between himself and the sitter by refusing to engage with her personal expression.

With Jeanne, the eyes and the tenderness never disappear, probably because their relationship was not the meeting of two equally powerful forces but one of dominance and submission. She was a nineteen-year-old art student when she met the 33-year-old Modigliani, and she was known for standing by him, even when he became abusive. As a consequence, perhaps, his portraits of her show an angelic, girlish creature, who looks too young to be a mother and seems in awe of the painter. In images such as Jeanne Hébuterne Sitting, we can detect her personal features – her doleful blue-green eyes, auburn hair and bulbous nose persist, despite the exaggerations and abstractions of his portraiture. Her traits remained intact in the 25 paintings he made of her (more than he painted of anyone else) in their brief, ultimately tragic relationship.

Jeanne came from a bourgeois, Catholic family who disapproved of the much older Modigliani for his bohemian lifestyle and Jewishness. It didn’t help that at the time he was involved with Jeanne, Modigliani’s family could no longer support him. So he was an impoverished, physically unwell artist who became volatile when he consumed copious quantities of drugs and alcohol. But Jeanne, an impressionable young woman, fell hard for the artist’s good looks and charm, still visible in the archival photos of him that remain. They stayed together from mid-1917 until the end of his life in January 1920 and had a child together, although they never married.

In 1918, Modigliani’s dealer, Leopold Zborowski took them to the south of France in an effort to reignite interest in the artist after the crash of the art market in Paris towards the end of World War One. He also wanted to help Modigliani recuperate his health. While in Provence, Modigliani had a renewed burst of artistic energy. He painted peasants in a manner reminiscent of his hero Cézanne, especially visible in the blue tones and subject choice of The Little Peasant. He depicted them on a grand scale, imbuing them with a stature, colouring and structural composition that echoes Cézanne’s portraits. Children also became new subjects for his art, perhaps because of his recent fatherhood.

Modigliani never recovered his health and died of tubercular meningitis a few months after returning to Paris in 1920. The distraught Jeanne, perhaps influenced by his alleged delirious request to have his favourite model with him in paradise, killed herself the day after Modigliani died by throwing herself out of her family’s fifth storey window. She was heavily pregnant with their second child. Their surviving daughter, named Jeanne like her mother, was raised by Modigliani’s family; the Hébuternes wanted to sever all connections with the cursed artist.

Modigliani’s nudes are among his most striking paintings – utterly different from his images of Jeanne or of any of the friends who modelled for his portraits. Lush and painterly, they ooze sensuality. Rich scarlet backgrounds complete many of the carnal scenes. His lovers did not act as models for the nude paintings. Instead, various models were provided by his dealer Zborowski (who also provided paints, canvases and a daily stipend for the artist) and the painting of these works took place in the dealer’s apartment. Modigliani painted over 30 nudes for Zborowski in a period between 1917 and 1919.

While his dealer saw their sale potential, the subject of the nudes appealed to Modigliani because it tied him into art history and the long tradition of painting the nude by artists such as Botticelli, Giorgione and Titian. What makes Modigliani’s nudes especially arresting is their immediacy. He does not place them in a mythological context — while several imitate classic poses, such as that of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, they are not Venuses. Instead Modigliani strips them of any historical references. They are pure flesh, pushed up close to the front of the picture plane and often cut off at the knees or arms, or squeezed into the canvas with little background, so that their torso is the focus of the gaze. This was jarring at the time – reputedly his only solo show in Paris was closed down because a nude in the window caused a public disturbance – and remains so today. Their exposed bodies are unabashedly sexy, with a centerfold quality that hovers on the verge of pornography but is prevented from falling into this by the formal qualities of his composition and the lack of personal expression that renders his subjects ‘Modiglianis’ rather than themselves. He is reported to have said, ‘To paint a woman is to possess her’ – whatever he meant by this, he has left us with their bodies rather than their souls. There are no names inscribed on the backgrounds, as in the portraits of his friends, no enduring personal traits. These paintings are about his art, rather than his life.

His portraits are not overtly emotional or expressionistic, but they are soulful. The luminosity of the paintings creates an inner light, a spirituality that seems at once modern and almost primal. Modigliani’s art is also highly-charged, tactile and engaging, which reflects his desire to move as far away as possible from facile, academic tradition.

There have been attempts to portray Modigliani as the Van Gogh of his generation: as an artist who lived tragically and died young, unknown and unappreciated. This characterisation tells us little of the art or the man. His contemporaries recognised that he was accomplished in three different media: painting, sculpture and drawing. Of Modigliani’s generation, only Picasso and Matisse were similarly gifted. As Modigliani’s friend the artist Jacob Epstein said, ‘The legend of the debauched artist is just a legend. What legend gives us is an implausible caricature of a man, a painter who left behind only a body of legends. Amedeo Modigliani left behind a life’s work in art.’ The current exhibition gives us the opportunity to look and learn.

Above info from the Royal Academy of Arts magazine article: Naked ambition
Amedeo Modigliani’s sensuous nudes and portraits are as captivating as the artist’s legendary life story, argues Kenneth Wayne.

[Rosic]

Links of Interest:

Amedeo Modigliani

105 works at Olga's Gallery

"Modigliani: The Legend Lives On..."

Modigliani Chronology

Modigliani at Art-Cyclopedia... Links galore!

Amedeo Modigliani at dozenlilacs.com

JEANNE HÉBUTERNE... Common-law wife of Modigliani includes her story and paintings of her my Modigliani...

Modigliani paintings of his friends...

Amedeo Modigliani: Portraits and Nudes, by Anette Kruszynski. From Pegasus, small format, but with great reproductions and excellent text.

Modigliani, by Jose Maria Faerna. From Abradale's Great Modern Masters series, an economical introduction.

Modigliani, by Carol Mann. From the Norton "World of Art" series, this one provides more biography than reproductions.

Early life, Personal life, Death, Legacy...

Modigliani Screensaver

Hi-Res images of many paintings (including nudes)

Modigliani's artwork at auctions...

Modigliani... the movie
http://www.bestprices.com/cgi-bin/vl...498842478.html

Andy Garcia on the Famous Painter's Life and Filming "Modigliani"

[Rosic]

Launching this now just in case Ernesto knocks my power out tonight...

[artbyjune]

Rosic...what a wonderful collection of information and reference links for the Modigliani MOM.

I hope to join in with an oil painting study of one of Modigliani's works because I like his style very much...especially the portraits and nudes.

If I don't get time, I will still try and check back to see how you all are doing.

Cheers...

[guillot]

Hi BERN!! FANTASTIC write up here - so much information. I say you went well beyond the call of duty !!

Miss you guys. Don't know if I can find the time to participate at this point - trying to get settled in - but looking forward to others coming my way !!

Take care and BIG HUG,

Tina

[SallyAnn]

Bernie,
Fantastic write up!
As you know, I'm definitely IN lol

I started on mine a couple of days ago just waiting for this MOM... I sketched it real quick, so its not quite right, but I am not too worried, I am just having fun with it. I cant seem to get my dodgy camera to pick up the colours very well, but irl it's more vibrant. Doesn;t help that today the remants of Ernesto are approaching,so its dark and wet - not ideal for photographing.

Can't wait to see everyone's work.

[artbyrenata]

This is very tempting Thanks for putting all the information together Bernie

SallyAnn - yours is looking great already!

[ujwala]

I think I'm going to have a go at this this time count me in.

[ujwala]

Rosic, I was going through a book that I have on Modigliani and wanted to paint a Portrait of his in his style. Is that permissible? Thank you.

[Rosic]

Just got back from a long weekend away in the mountains... so glad to see so many of you all interested in this MOM project. I plan to do a couple myself...

June... So glad that you may be able to take part... I hope your schedule works out where you can.

Tina... well hello to my dear friend... hope you are getting settled in fine. Maybe you can join us in 2007... be thinking about some masters for our list.

SallyAnn... When I think about this project I think about you! You are off and running... looking GREAT! If I know you... you're good for a couple... right?

Renata... Are you going to be able to join in? Hope so... your presence always makes the MOM's that much better!

Originally Posted by ujwala

Rosic, I was going through a book that I have on Modigliani and wanted to paint a Portrait of his in his style. Is that permissible? Thank you.

Ujwala... so glad to have you onborad... by all means... paint away... I can't wait to see this portrait evolve!

Here's to Modigliani...

Have any of you guys seen the movie? What did you think?

Bern

[artbyjune]

Hi Bernie,
I got enthusiatic today and did a first quick study of one of Modigliani's portraits of a woman/girl called Alice. (about 7 by 12 ins)

Just to get a feel for how Modigliani stylised portraits. My colours and drawing are not exact as you can see... but if I have time, I hope to do another with more exact depiction, (well as exact as I can manage).

I hope its not too horrible to show here. I kind of dread posting in the oils forum where everyone seems to be a master of this medium.



Have to say, I had great fun doing it.

[artbyjune]

Sally Ann, I like your cellist.

[Rosic]

Bravo June!

Almond eyes and oval head... definitely a Modiglianish trait!

I'm working on transforming the harp player into a Modigliani...

30"x24" stretched canvas.... fixed vine charcoal sketch....