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Friday, October 25, 2013

Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani: Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice





 

Jeanne Hébuterne
Jeanne Hébuterne (6 April 1898 – 25 January 1920) was a French artist, best known as the frequent subject and common-law wife of the artist Amedeo Modigliani.

 

Early life

Jeanne Hébuterne was born in Paris to a Roman Catholic family. Her father, Achille Casimir Hébuterne, worked at Le Bon Marché department store.[1] A beautiful girl, she was introduced to the artistic community in Montparnasse by her brother André Hébuterne who wanted to become a painter. She met several of the then-starving artists and modeled for Tsuguharu Foujita.[2] However, wanting to pursue a career in the arts, and with a talent for drawing, she chose to study at the Académie Colarossi. It was there in the spring of 1917 that Jeanne Hébuterne was introduced to Amedeo Modigliani by the sculptor Chana Orloff (1888–1968) who came with many other artists to take advantage of the Academy's live models. Jeanne soon began an affair with the charismatic artist, and the two fell deeply in love. She soon moved in with him, despite strong objection from her deeply Catholic parents.[3]

Modigliani

 

Hébuterne by Modigliani, 1918
Described by the writer Charles-Albert Cingria (fr) (1883–1954) as gentle, shy, quiet, and delicate, Jeanne Hébuterne became a principal subject for Modigliani's art. In the fall of 1918, the couple moved to the warmer climate of Nice on the French Riviera where Modigliani's agent hoped he might raise his profile by selling some of his works to the wealthy art connoisseurs who wintered there. While they were in Nice, their daughter was born on 29 November. The following spring, they returned to Paris and Jeanne became pregnant again. By this time, Modigliani was suffering from tuberculous meningitis and his health, made worse by complications brought on by substance abuse, was deteriorating badly.[4]

Tragedy

On 24 January 1920 Amedeo Modigliani died. Jeanne Hébuterne's family brought her to their home but Jeanne, totally distraught, threw herself out of the fifth-floor apartment window the day after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child.[3] Her family, who blamed her demise on Modigliani, interred her in the Cimetière de Bagneux. Nearly ten years later, the Hébuterne family finally relented and allowed her remains to be transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery to rest beside Modigliani. Her epitaph reads: "Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice."[3]
Their orphaned daughter, Jeanne Modigliani (1918–84), was adopted by her father's sister in Florence, Italy. She grew up knowing virtually nothing of her parents and as an adult began researching their lives.[4] In 1958, she wrote a biography of her father that was published in the English language in the United States as Modigliani: Man and Myth. ISBN 1-199-15698-1

Legacy

It took more than thirty years before an art scholar convinced the Hébuterne heirs to allow public access to Jeanne Hébuterne's artwork. In October 2000, her works were featured at a major Modigliani exhibition in Venice, Italy by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.[3][5]

Her work

  • Natura morta
  • Self portrait, 1916
  • Death, 1919
  • Portrait of Modigliani, 1919

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jeanne Hébuterne.
  1. Jump up ^ "Galerie André Roussard". Jeanne Hebuterne (1898–1920). Retrieved July 1, 2008.
  2. Jump up ^ Jimenez, Jill Berk, ed. (2001). "Hébuterne, Jeanne: French, 1898–1920". Dictionary of Artists' Models. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 269–72. ISBN 978-1-57958-233-3.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Lappin, Linda (June 22, 2002). "Missing person in Montparnasse: The case of Jeanne Hebuterne". Literary Review 45 (4): 785–811.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b "An Introduction to Art History". Amedeo Modigliani. Retrieved July 1, 2008.
  5. Jump up ^ "JHU Libraries". Modigliani e i suoi : Jeanne Hébuterne, André Hébuterne, Georges Dorignac, Amedeo Modigliani / a cura di Christian Parisot. Retrieved July 1, 2008. [dead

Amedeo Modigliani

 
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani Photo.jpg
Birth nameAmedeo Clemente Modigliani
Born(1884-07-12)12 July 1884
Livorno, Italy
Died24 January 1920(1920-01-24) (aged 35)
Paris, France
NationalityItalian
FieldPainting, Sculpture
TrainingAccademia di Belle Arti, Florence
WorksNude Sitting on a Divan
Madame Pompadour
Jeanne Hébuterne in Red Shawl
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈdɛo modiʎˈʎani]; July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style, characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. He died at age 35 in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overwork and addiction to alcohol and narcotics.

 

Family and early life

Modigliani birthplace in Livorno
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy. A port city, Livorno had long served as a refuge for those persecuted for their religion, and was home to a large Jewish community. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Solomon Garsin, had immigrated to Livorno in the 18th century as a refugee.[1]
Modigliani's mother (Eugénie Garsin), who was born and grew up in Marseille, was descended from an intellectual, scholarly family of Sephardic Jews, generations of whom had resided along the Mediterranean coastline. Her ancestors were learned people, fluent in many languages, known authorities on sacred Jewish texts, and founders of a school of Talmudic studies. Family legend traced the Garsins' lineage to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The family business was believed to be a credit agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London. Their financial fortunes ebbed and flowed.[2]
Modigliani’s father, Flaminio, hailed from a family of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. While not as culturally sophisticated as the Garsins, they knew how to invest in and develop thriving business endeavors. When the Garsin and Modigliani families announced the engagement of their children, Flaminio was a wealthy young mining engineer. He managed the mine in Sardinia and also managed the almost 30,000 acres of timberland the family owned.[3] A reversal in fortune occurred to this prosperous family in 1883. An economic downturn in the price of metal plunged the Modiglianis into bankruptcy. Ever resourceful, Modigliani’s mother used her social contacts to establish a school and, along with her two sisters, made the school into a successful enterprise.[4]
Modigliani was the fourth child, whose birth coincided with the disastrous financial collapse of his father's business interests. Amedeo's birth saved the family from ruin; according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. The bailiffs entered the family's home just as Eugenia went into labour; the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of her.
Modigliani had a close relationship with his mother, who taught him at home until he was 10. Beset with health problems after an attack of pleurisy when he was about 11, a few years later he developed a case of typhoid fever. When he was 16 he was taken ill again and contracted the tuberculosis which would later claim his life. After Modigliani recovered from the second bout of pleurisy, his mother took him on a tour of southern Italy: Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi, then north to Florence and Venice.[5][6][7]
His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation. When he was 11 years of age, she had noted in her diary:
“The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. He behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence. We shall have to wait and see what is inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?[8]”

Art student years

Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his mother wrote,[9] even before beginning formal studies. Despite her misgivings that launching him on a course of studying art would impinge upon his other studies, his mother indulged the young Modigliani's passion for the subject.
At the age of fourteen, while sick with typhoid fever, he raved in his delirium that he wanted, above all else, to see the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence. As Livorno's local museum housed only a sparse few paintings by the Italian Renaissance masters, the tales he had heard about the great works held in Florence intrigued him, and it was a source of considerable despair to him, in his sickened state, that he might never get the chance to view them in person. His mother promised that she would take him to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered. Not only did she fulfil this promise, but she also undertook to enroll him with the best painting master in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.

Micheli and the Macchiaioli

Modigliani worked in Micheli's Art School from 1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere steeped in a study of the styles and themes of 19th-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen. His nascent work was shaped as much by such artists as Giovanni Boldini as by Toulouse-Lautrec.
Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and ceased his studies only when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.
In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of melodramatic religious and literary scenes. Morelli had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who were known by the title "the Macchiaioli" (from macchia —"dash of colour", or, more derogatively, "stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli. This localized landscape movement reacted against the bourgeois stylings of the academic genre painters. While sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not make the same impact upon international art culture as did the contemporaries and followers of Monet, and are today largely forgotten outside of Italy.
Modigliani's connection with the movement was through Guglielmo Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a Macchiaiolo himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterized the movement. Micheli also tried to encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafés, but preferring to paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint landscapes (three are known to exist),[10] Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more akin to Cézanne than to the Macchiaioli.
While with Micheli, Modigliani studied not only landscape, but also portraiture, still life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the last was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.[9]
Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favour with his teacher, who referred to him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Fattori himself would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.[11]
In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a lifelong infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies", of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. A year later, while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he registered to study at the Regia Accademia ed Istituto di Belle Arti.
It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage rebellion, or the cliched hedonism and bohemianism that was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies, including those of Nietzsche.

Early literary influences

Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.
Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the thinking of Nietzsche. In these letters, he advised friend Oscar Ghiglia;
“(hold sacred all) which can exalt and excite your intelligence... (and) ... seek to provoke ... and to perpetuate ... these fertile stimuli, because they can push the intelligence to its maximum creative power.[12]”
The work of Lautréamont was equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book became Modigliani's favourite to the extent that he learnt it by heart.[11] The poetry of Lautréamont is characterized by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes. Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas brewing in Modigliani's mind. Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he regularly sent, and which survive today.[13]
“Dear friendI write to pour myself out to you and to affirm myself to myself.
I am the prey of great powers that surge forth and then disintegrate...
A bourgeois told me today–insulted me–that I or at least my brain was lazy. It did me good. I should like such a warning every morning upon awakening: but they cannot understand us nor can they understand life...[14]		”

Paris

Arrival

Portrait of Juan Gris, 1915
In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the centre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.
He later befriended Jacob Epstein, they aimed to set up a studio together with a shared vision to create a Temple of Beauty to be enjoyed by all, for which Modigliani created drawings and paintings of the intended stone caryatids for ‘The Pillars of Tenderness ’which would support the imagined temple.[15]
Le Bateau-Lavoir
Modigliani settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir,[16] a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter of Montmartre was characterized by generalized poverty, Modigliani himself presented—initially, at least—as one would expect the son of a family trying to maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and Renaissance reproductions. He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.[12]
When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Académie Colarossi, and he drank wine in moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit reserved, verging on the asocial.[12] He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picasso who, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.[12]
Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1915
Portrait of Chaim Soutine, 1916
Caryatid , now at The New Art Gallery Walsall

Transformation

Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this. Modigliani's behaviour at this time sheds some light upon his developing style as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his training up to that point.
Not only did he remove all the trappings of his bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying practically all of his own early work. He explained this extraordinary course of actions to his astonished neighbours thus:
“Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois.[17]”
The motivation for this violent rejection of his earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. From the time of his arrival in Paris, Modigliani consciously crafted a charade persona for himself and cultivated his reputation of hopeless drunk and voracious drug user. His escalating intake of drugs and alcohol may have been a means by which Modigliani masked his tuberculosis from his acquaintances, few of whom knew of his condition.[18] Tuberculosis—the leading cause of death in France by 1900[19]—was highly communicable, there was no cure, and those who had it were feared, ostracized, and pitied. Modigliani thrived on camaraderie and would not let himself be isolated as an invalid; he sought to suppress his coughing bouts and any other recognizable signs of the disease that was slowly consuming him. Modigliani used drink and drugs as palliatives to ease his physical pain, helping him to maintain a facade of vitality and allowing him to continue to create his art.[20]
Modigliani's use of drink and drugs intensified from about 1914 onward. After years of remission and recurrence, this was the period in when the symptoms of his tuberculosis worsened, signaling that the disease had reached an advanced stage.[21]
He sought the company of artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.[17] Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings.[22] He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well known as that of Vincent van Gogh.
During the 1920s, in the wake of Modigliani's career and spurred on by comments by André Salmon crediting hashish and absinthe with the genesis of Modigliani's style, many hopefuls tried to emulate his "success" by embarking on a path of substance abuse and bohemian excess. Salmon claimed—erroneously—that whereas Modigliani was a totally pedestrian artist when sober,
“...from the day that he abandoned himself to certain forms of debauchery, an unexpected light came upon him, transforming his art. From that day on, he became one who must be counted among the masters of living art.[23]”
In fact, art historians suggest[23] that it is entirely possible that Modigliani would have achieved even greater artistic heights had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences.

Output

During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost—destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them.[22]
He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with those of other artists.
He met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna was recently married, they began an affair.[citation needed] Anna was tall (as Modigliani was only 5 foot 5 inches) with dark hair (like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes, she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year, however, Anna returned to her husband.

Gallery of works

Montparnasse, Paris

Female Head, 1911/1912, Tate

Sculpture

In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. He was Constantin Brâncuși's disciple for one year.
Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, by 1914 he abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty in acquiring sculptural materials due to the outbreak of war, and by Modigliani's physical debilitation.[24]
In June 2010 Modigliani's Tête, a limestone carving of a woman's head, became the second most expensive sculpture ever sold.

Friends and influences

Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moïse Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.

The war years

Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and André Salmon, 1916
At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.[citation needed]
Known as Modì, which translates as 'cursed' (maudit), by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention. Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.[citation needed] When the British painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as "Modigliani; painter and Jew". They became great friends.
In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Léopold Zborowski and his wife Anna. Zborowski became Modigliani's primary art dealer and friend during the artist's final years, helping him financially, and also organizing his show in Paris in 1917.

Patronage of Léopold Zborowski

Portrait of Leopold Zborowski, 1918

The 1917 Paris Show

The several dozen nudes Modigliani painted between 1916 and 1919 constitute many of his best-known works. This series of nudes was commissioned by Modigliani's dealer and friend Leopold Zborowski, who lent the artist use of his apartment, supplied models and painting materials, and paid him between fifteen and twenty francs each day for his work.[25]
The paintings from this arrangement were thus different from his previous depictions of friends and lovers in that they were funded by Zborowski either for his own collection, as a favor to his friend, or with an eye to their "commercial potential", rather than originating from the artist's personal circle of acquaintances.[26]
The Paris show of 1917 was Modigliani's only solo exhibition during his life, and is "notorious" in modern art history for its sensational public reception and the attendant issues of obscenity.[27] The show was closed by police on its opening day, but continued thereafter, most likely after the removal of paintings from the gallery's streetfront window.[27]
Nude Sitting on a Divan is one of a series of nudes painted by Modigliani in 1917 that created a sensation when exhibited in Paris that year. According to the catalogue description from the 2010 sale of the painting at Sotheby's, seven nudes were exhibited in the 1917 show.

Nice[edit]

On a trip to Nice which had been conceived and organized by Léopold Zborowski, Modigliani, Foujita and other artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists. Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures, but only for a few francs each. Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works.[citation needed]
During his lifetime, he sold a number of his works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive soon vanished for his habits.[citation needed]

Jeanne Hébuterne

Jeanne Hébuterne
In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne[28] who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together, and although Hébuterne was the current love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.[citation needed]
On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.
After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant, and on November 29, 1918, gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918–1984).
In May 1919 he returned to Paris, where, with Hébuterne and their daughter, he rented an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière. While there, Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani painted portraits of each other, and of themselves.[citation needed]
When Modigliani died on January 24, 1920, Hébuterne was pregnant with their second child.

Death

Amedeo Modigliani, 1919, near the end of his life
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent.
In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbour checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne, who was nearly nine months pregnant. They summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was in the final stage of his disease, dying of tubercular meningitis.
Modigliani died on January 24, 1920. There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, a day after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads: "Struck down by Death at the moment of glory." Hers reads: "Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice." [29]
Modigliani, managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants, died penniless and destitute.

Legacy

Influences

Grave of Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne in Père Lachaise Cemetery
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’attendes pas avec l’avante garde,” (“Don’t pay attention to the avante 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 this year 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.
Red Nude (1917) plays an important part in the film Travels With My Aunt (1972). The slyly winking face of Maggie Smith, complete with bright red hair, seems to have been superimposed onto the original painting.
The 1968 French film, Le tatoué features a fictional Legionnaire who has his back covered by a tattoo done by Modigliani. Since after his death, works by Modigliani have skyrocketed in value, an art dealer spends the movie trying to get the tattoo off the back of the Legionnaire, and into a museum.

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]

Selected works

Paintings

Sculptures

Only 27 sculptures by Modigliani are known to exist.[citation needed]
  • Head of a Woman (1910/1911).
  • Head (1911–1913).
  • Head (1911–1912).
  • Head (1912).
  • Rose Caryatid (1914).

See also

External video
Modigliani's Young Woman in a Shirt, Smarthistory[38]

References

  1. Jump up ^ Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 13. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  2. Jump up ^ Secrest, Modigilani, Alfred Knopf, 2011, pp. 16-18
  3. Jump up ^ Secrest (2011), Modigilani,pp. 24-25
  4. Jump up ^ Secrest (2011), Modigilani, pp. 34-35
  5. Jump up ^ Fifield, William (19 June 1978). Modigliani: A Biography. W.H. Allen. p. 316. ISBN 0-491-02164-X.
  6. Jump up ^ Diehl, Gaston (Reissue edition (Jul 1989)). Modigliani. Crown Pub. p. 96. ISBN 0-517-50798-6.
  7. Jump up ^ Soby, James Thrall (Sep 1977). Amedeo Modigliani. New York: Arno P. p. 55.
  8. Jump up ^ Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 14. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 12. ISBN 0-500-20176-5.
  10. Jump up ^ Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 16. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 16. ISBN 0-500-20176-5.
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 17. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  13. Jump up ^ Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 19–22. ISBN 0-500-20176-5.
  14. Jump up ^ Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 20. ISBN 0-500-20176-5.
  15. Jump up ^ "Modigliani Caryatid Drawings". The New Art Gallery Walsall Catalogue. The New Art Gallery Walsall. Retrieved 16/05/2013.
  16. Jump up ^ "Modigliani Caryatid Drawings". The New Art Gallery Walsall. Retrieved 16/06/13.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 19. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  18. Jump up ^ Secrest, Meryle, Modigliani, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 181, 183
  19. Jump up ^ Secrest, Meryle, Modigliani, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 181
  20. Jump up ^ Secrest, Meryle, Modigliani, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 298
  21. Jump up ^ Secrest, Meryle, Modigliani, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 182
  22. ^ Jump up to: a b Werner, Alfred (1985). Amedeo Modigliani. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. p. 24. ISBN 0-8109-1416-6.
  23. ^ Jump up to: a b Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 20. ISBN 0-8109-0323-7.
  24. Jump up ^ Klein, Mason, et al., Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, page 197. The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press, 2004.
  25. Jump up ^ Klein, Mason, et al., 61–62
  26. Jump up ^ Klein, Mason, et al, 62-63
  27. ^ Jump up to: a b Klein, Mason, et al, 56
  28. Jump up ^ "Photo". Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza. Retrieved retrieved June 8, 2009.
  29. Jump up ^ Lappin, Linda (June 22, 2002). "Missing person in Montparnasse: The case of Jeanne Hebuterne". Literary Review 45 (4): 785–811.
  30. Jump up ^ Secrest, Meryle, Modigliani, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, p. 346-47
  31. Jump up ^ Georgina Adam (May 15, 2002), Pushkin accused of displaying a fake Forbes Magazine.
  32. Jump up ^ Sophia Kishkovsky (November 10, 2011), Pushkin accused of displaying a fake The Art Newspaper.
  33. Jump up ^ Gareth Harris (January 24, 2013), Fake Modiglianis Poison Art Market The Art Newspaper.
  34. Jump up ^ "Modigliani nude sells for a record $68.9m". BBC News. November 3, 2010.
  35. ^ Jump up to: a b Peter Schjeldahl, Book review of Meryle Secrest’s “Modigliani: A Life”, The New Yorker, March 7, 2011 Abstract
  36. Jump up ^ BBC News - Five masterpieces stolen from Paris modern art museum
  37. Jump up ^ Artistic Impressions | South China Morning Post
  38. Jump up ^ "Modigliani's Young Woman in a Shirt". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved January 13, 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Amedeo Modigliani.
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