Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈdɛo modiʎˈʎani]; July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures. He died at age 35 in Paris of tubercular meningitis.

– From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LEGACY

Influences

The linear form of African sculpture and the depictive humanism of the figurative Renaissance painters informed his work. Working during that fertile period of “isms,” Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Modigliani did not choose to be categorized within any of these prevailing, defining confines. He was unclassifiable, stubbornly insisting on his difference. He was an artist putting down paint on canvas creating works not to shock and outrage, but to say, “This is what I see.” More appreciated over the years by collectors than academicians and critics, Modigliani was indifferent to staking a claim for himself in the intellectual avant-garde of the art world. One can say he recognized the merit of Jean Cocteau’s proclamation: “Ne t’attardes pas avec l’avante garde” (“Don’t pay attention to the avant-garde”).[30]

Since his death, Modigliani’s reputation has soared. Nine novels, a play, a documentary, and three feature films have been devoted to his life. Modigliani’s sister in Florence adopted their daughter, Jeanne (1918–1984). As an adult, she wrote a biography of her father titled, Modigliani: Man and Myth.

Art market

The Modigliani estate is one of the most problematic in the art world. There are at least five catalogues raisonnés of the artist’s work including a volume by Ambrogio Ceroni, last updated in 1972. Arthur Pfannstiel (1929 and 1956) and Joseph Lanthemann‘s (1970) books are widely dismissed today. Milanese scholar Osvaldo Patani produced three volumes: paintings (1991), drawings (1992) and one on the Paul Alexandre period (1994), while Christian Parisot has published Volumes I, II and IV (in 1970, 1971 and 1996) of a catalogue raisonné.[31] In 2006, about 6,000 documents from the estate—believed to be the only ones existing—were moved permanently from France to Italy. Parisot, as president of the Modigliani Institut Archives Legales in Rome, had the legal right to authenticate Modigliani’s work.[32] In 2013, Parisot was arrested by the Italian art forgery unit after a two-year investigation; the police seized works attributed to the artist, along with suspect authenticity certificates.[33]

In November 2010, a painting of a nude by Amedeo Modigliani, part of a series of nudes he created around 1917, sold for more than $68.9m (£42.7m) at an auction in New York—a record for the artist’s work. Bidding for La Belle Romaine pushed its price well past its $40m (£24.8m) estimate. Modigliani’s previous auction record was 43.2m euros (£35.8m), set earlier in 2010 in Paris. Another painting by the artist—Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau), one of the first portraits he painted of his lover—sold for $19.1m (£11.8m), much higher than its pre-sale estimate of $9–12m (£5.6–7.4m).[34]

Cinema

Two films have been made about Modigliani: Les Amants de Montparnasse (1958), directed by Jacques Becker and starring Gérard Philipe as Modigliani; and Modigliani (2004), directed by Mick Davis and starring Andy García as Modigliani.

Critical reactions

Peter Schjeldahl wrote:

I recall my thrilled first exposure, as a teenager, to one of his long-necked women, with their piquantly tipped heads and mask-like faces. The rakish stylization and the succulent color were easy to enjoy, and the payoff was sanguinely erotic in a way that endorsed my personal wishes to be bold and tender and noble, overcoming the wimp that I was. In that moment, I used up Modigliani’s value for my life. But in museums ever since I have been happy to salute his pictures with residually grateful, quick looks.[35]

Schjeldahl reports Meryle Secrest’s speculation that Modigliani was happy to let people consider him an alcoholic and drug addict, “and thus to mistake the symptoms of his tuberculosis, which he kept a secret. Drunks were tolerated; carriers of infectious diseases were not.”[35]

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