[REVIEW] Modigliani: Beyond the Myth
Dec. 26th, 2004 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFor an exhibition with a title that claims to be iconoclastic, the Art Gallery of Ontario's exhibition Modigliani: Beyond the Myth--running from the 23rd of October to the 23rd of January--does very little to challenge the prevalent myths about the Italian-born and Paris-based painter Amedeo Modigliani. As the AGO's own flyer says,
S. (a fellow attendee, see below) noted that Modigliani must be the art world's James Dean. The exhibition's title is, I fear, pure rhetoric.
I admit to sharing in the general fondness for the France of the belle époque, more specifically for the Paris of that timeframe: the sheer density of artists, writers, thinkers, and dramatic conflicts looks fantastic in retrospect. Yes, I felt this way before I saw Moulin Rouge, though certainly that very nice film has helped give the literature on and characters of that era extra kick; handling Dan Franck's Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art at work today, I noticed on the back cover a comment excerpted from the Austin Chronicle's review which praised the title as a sourcebook on the era and the place.
I attended Modigliani: Beyond the Myth this Saturday just past, starting the tour in the estimable and enjoyable company of N. and S. from Queen's and with M. at just after two o'clock.
Modigliani was born into the Jewish community of Livorno, a port community lying on the western coast of the Italian region of Tuscany. The Jews of Livorno, like the Jews residing in the Mediterranean basin generally, differ significantly from the largest and of North America and northern Europe inasmuch as the Livorno Jewish community is Sephardic, tracing its origins to the Iberian peninsula. As the Jewish Virtual Library notes, the Livorno Jewish community emerged as a consequence of the Spanish and Portuguese edicts against Judaism in the 1490s, part of the same movement that created the English Jewish community, as I noted in May.
Modigliani's Jewish background was a source of pride for him, influencing many of his works (the 1915 sketch A Woman, Heads and Jewish Symbols comes particularly to mind). Equally, his Italian origins were important for Modigliani, his myth claiming that his final words, as he lay dying of tubercular meningitis on his bed in 1920 at 35, were "cara Italia," "beloved Italy." Tony McNeill notes that Italians, perhaps the single largest immigrant group by nationality in Third Republic France, were subjected to considerable hostility:
Behind the hostility to immigrants was often the fear of l'invasion, the invasion of France by large numbers of foreigners who were seen as briseurs de grève, pushing down the wages of the honest and hard-working Français de souche, threatening the social order and the purity of French womanhood (Bernard: 1993 p.21).
The other fear was of l'inassimilablité, the concern that these immigrants would not integrate sucessfully into French society. Italian and Polish immigrants, for example, were attacked for their religious devotion by a French working class that was no longer regularly attending Church (mass, confession etc.) and given the derogatory term Christos (mainly the Italians) or calotins (mainly the Polish). Their religion - Catholicism not Islam or Judaism - hampered immigrants' integration into French society.
This hostility inevitably led at points to violence. The economic downturn that occurred in the late nineteenth century led to a rise in violent xenophobia and attacks on France's immigrants were frequent. Anti-Italian riots, for example, occurred in Marseilles in 1881 and Lyon in 1894. The most notorious attack on immigrants occurred in 1893 when a mob, inflamed by the assassination of President Carnot by an Italian anarchist, set upon Italian immigrants in the town of Aigues-Mortes in southern France killing eight Italians and injuring many more.
Although the exhibition didn't comment on it, Modigliani's doubly foreign origins--Jewish in a demographically if not officially Catholic France, Italian in a somewhat xenophobic France--must have played a major role in his somewhat chilly reception in France. This was undisclosed by the exhibition, which concentrated on his memorization as a child of entire passages of Dante and Nostradamus, his readings of Bergson and Nietzche and Wilde and D'Annunzio, his classical education in art, certainly his participation in the European discourses of impressionism and innovation in art. He was a participant in all manner of discourses at all sorts of scales, even non-Western discourses: artworks--West African, Polynesian, Khmer; paintings, carvings, statuary--taken from the new French empire and exhibited at the Musée de l'Homme inspired him.
The Ocean's Bridge website links to images of many of the artworks included in the AGO exhibition.
The first work of note that I saw, on entering the exhibition area, was 1918's Pierrot, a self-portrait in the style of the commedia dell'arte character of the same name, portraying Modigliani the man as a misunderstood and isolated individual. This mood was continued by the 1898 Small Tuscan Road: the painting, divided by a road in the foreground, with a small low house to the left and the mountains in the distance, conveyed a sort of uneasy mood. 1908's Nude with A Hat (Recto) is the first to really fit alongside Modigliani's alignment with the demi-monde of Paris, showing a nude women wearing a large hat and posing for the viewer seductively, but with her pursed lips and overlarge breasts and yellowish skin only causing the viewer concern.
The Caryatids were the next major collection of works featured in the show. A category of drawings deriving their names from Greek religious statuary, the Caryatids were drawn between 1909 and 1914. These colonnes de tendresse were also influenced by expressionism and African statuary. Standing Nude with Crossed Arms was the Caryatid that impressed me the most, drawn entirely in various shades of blue--I was reminded of Jarman.
Woman With a Loincloth (1908) is drawn in red chalk on paper. Notable for its very angular lines and blurred edges, Woman manages to be a very human and emotive work. The neighbouring 1913 Red Bust reminded me of Attic pottery, with the red figure of a woman staring out against a black background. In junior high art class, we did similar works--a layer of black crayon under a layer of orange crayon, the second layer then carefully scratched out.
M. saw someone who he thought was Atom Egoyan. I liked The Sweet Hereafter, so I went back with M. to confirm the sighting. Yes, he was touring the Modogliani exhibition last Saturday. I followed my peers' counsel and resisted the urge to compliment Egoyan on his work.
There was an alcove containing sketches done in various media. The crayon-and-paper The Acrobat (done around 1912) was one of the first to interest me, featuring a figure in tights pointing towards the background. L'Estatico--a sketch done in graphite on paper in 1916--was powerful. (1914's Anadiomena, in contrast, was completely opaque.) The 1915-1916 sketch Adam is notable for its frontal nudity of the first man in Abrahmic myth, while the 1915 Woman, Heads, and Jewish Symbols contains what is--for me--the most explicit statement of Modigliani's Jewish roots in his works, with symbols and slogans repeated. The Portrait of Jeanne Hetenval stood out in the alcove for its incrredible level of detail. Inscribed in crayon and charcoal, the highly detailed head of Mme Hetenval challenges the viewer directly.
Five of Modigliani's 25 statues are currently on display in Toronto. This is a relatively small body of work, despite his early inclination towards sculpture. He only began in 1907, with the help of the Romanian Constantine Brancusi, casting first in clay then in bronze; he stopped altogether in 1914, whether because of wartime shortages or his deteriorating health or both factors. The statues were all of heads, all marked strongly by West African and Ancient Egyptian models, all slightly asymmetrical. Modigliani manages to communicate distinct personalities.
After passing through a room filled with children and adults trying to make their own sketches of Modigliani's works or in Modigliani's style, we four arrived at the central room of the exhibition and the myth, exploring Modigliani's presence in Montparnasse. He moved there from Montmartre in 1909, becoming a prominent figure at major cafes like La Rotonde and La Dôme, meeting with artists and expatriates coming from across Europe, doing paintings and sketches there for money. (Too, Modigliani's Jewish origins became more prominent in this time period, as he encountered Jewish expatriates--Léon Indenbaum, Chana Orloff, Oscar Miestchaninoff, Jacques Lipschitz--in the context of a Third Republic where Jewish identity was politicized.) Photographs of the art studio at 8, rue de la Grande-Chaumiere shared with his lover Jeanne Hebuterne were also on display.
Paintings of many of Modigliani's friends feature prominently in the exhibition, as they well should given Modigliani's remarkable ability to capture personalities in even his most styelized works. There is a stark and powerful monochromatic 1916 painting of Indenbaum, stylized with his pursed lips and long head. There are several sketches of the British Theosophist Beatrice Hastings (the 1915 Portrait of Mrs. Hastings and Beatrice Hastings in Front of a Door, the 1916 Portrait of Beatrice Hastings); this final painting, like Standing Nude with Crossed Arms, is done entirely in shades of blue. A 1919 painting of Lunia Czechowska, included in the exhibition, features prominently in the AGO's publicity material; the viewer is informed that the two were never lovers, though they were "soulmates." (Indeed, the viewer is told elsewhere that with the exception of Hebuterne, Modigliani never painted his lovers.) One can notice Modigliani's portraiture evolving over time, becoming marked by sharp transitions between colours and fine gradations within specific swathes. 1917's The Blue Top stands out, as does the 1917 Portrait of a Girl done entirely in dark reds and browns, and the 1916-1917 portrait of Jean Cocteau that shows the master sitting in a high-backed chair. Modiglani's most affecting portraits tended to be those done of anonymous sitters--in 1917, The Italian Woman, in 1918--Young Seated Boy With Cap, The Beautiful Shop Girl, The Little Peasant, The Servant Girl. The details of their identity have been lost, but Modigliani managed to preserve their essences in their uncertain but bold approaches to the camera.
Modigliani's nudes were on display in the final room of the exhibition, across from a portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (who had a showing in 2000 of some 60 works). He painted some 30 nudes over 1916 and 1917; his only solo exhibition, of these nudes, was closed down by the Paris police on charges of obscenity. Frankly, it's easy to understand why, since all of his nudes--most particularly Nude with Coral Necklace, Reclining Nude (The Dream), Reclining Nude--exude a remarkable warmth and sensuality.
Across the hall from Beyond the Myth's exit was the Reading Portraits exhibition, a small show containing portraits from the AGO's collection. Portraits, the introductory placard claimed, are marked by the gap between ideals and realities, by the many ways in which a person's essence can be communicated in ways not necessrily closely related to physical realities.
Augustus John's 1917 Lady Cynthia Asquith, Lady in Black is a simple painting, showing a woman in a simple black dress and short curly hair, with eyes looking away from the view, left hand on her right shoulder, right hand on her lap. Glyn Warren Philpot's near-contemporary 1914 Guillaume Rolland, a Young Breton shows a young man standing, dressed in provincial costume (black pants, wide belt, pinkish blouse), arms by his side, looking directly at the viewer. Jean-François Millet's 1838 Louise Jumelin and Jan Kupecki's Study for Self-Portrait with Son Christian Johann Friedrich are much older works, portraits of ordinary people; Sir Joshua Reynolds' 1778-1779 George Townshend, 7th Viscount Townshend is a straightforward exercise in national propaganda, showing the victorious Field Marshal on the field of battle; Eugène Devériau's 1839 Portrait of Comte Henri de Cambis d'Orsan shows a fashionable noble of Orleanist France. The 1920s portraits of Jacques Villon--notably 1927's Louisette--stand out for their distinct colour schemes.
The exhibition does little to dispel the Modigliani myth, that whole complex of ideas completely and enjoyable summed up by Moulin Rouge. I don't care--the art and its display are just that good. If you're in the Toronto area before the exhibition leaves, you really should go see it.
The myth has all the epic drama of an opera: the artist as tortured genius, oppressed by chronic ill health and poverty, attempts to conquer the Parisian art world, meanwhile living a flamboyant life involving alcohol, drug abuse, and volatile relationships with women. Not only does the artist die young, but his twenty-one-year-old mistress (Jeanne Hébuterne), pregnant with their second child, falls to her own death from a fifth floor window shortly after his death. No wonder the myth lives on today more potent than ever[.]
S. (a fellow attendee, see below) noted that Modigliani must be the art world's James Dean. The exhibition's title is, I fear, pure rhetoric.
I admit to sharing in the general fondness for the France of the belle époque, more specifically for the Paris of that timeframe: the sheer density of artists, writers, thinkers, and dramatic conflicts looks fantastic in retrospect. Yes, I felt this way before I saw Moulin Rouge, though certainly that very nice film has helped give the literature on and characters of that era extra kick; handling Dan Franck's Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art at work today, I noticed on the back cover a comment excerpted from the Austin Chronicle's review which praised the title as a sourcebook on the era and the place.
I attended Modigliani: Beyond the Myth this Saturday just past, starting the tour in the estimable and enjoyable company of N. and S. from Queen's and with M. at just after two o'clock.
Modigliani was born into the Jewish community of Livorno, a port community lying on the western coast of the Italian region of Tuscany. The Jews of Livorno, like the Jews residing in the Mediterranean basin generally, differ significantly from the largest and of North America and northern Europe inasmuch as the Livorno Jewish community is Sephardic, tracing its origins to the Iberian peninsula. As the Jewish Virtual Library notes, the Livorno Jewish community emerged as a consequence of the Spanish and Portuguese edicts against Judaism in the 1490s, part of the same movement that created the English Jewish community, as I noted in May.
In the 16th century, [Tuscan Grand Duke] Cosimo I (1537-1574) wanted to increase the importance of Livorno, so he invited foreigners, including Marranos, to come to the new port. In 1587, the Grand Duke invited merchants of all nations to come to Livorno and Pisa. Further invitations were made by Ferdinand I (1587-1609), in 1593, who offered asylum to all Levantines, Spanish, Portugese, Germans and Italians.
Jews and other nationalities were given many rights and privileges. Ferdinand I’s charter offered the Jews religious freedom, amnesty from previous crimes, full Tuscan citizenship and special courts with civil and criminal jurisdictions. Safe passage of goods and persons was guaranteed to all Jews who moved to Livorno. Jews could own houses, inherit property, carry arms at any hour, open shops in all parts of the city, have Christian servants and nursemaids, study at the university, work as doctors and did not have to wear the Jewish badge. Finally, unlike many other cities in Tuscany, Jews did not have to live in a ghetto.
These conditions proved attractive to Marranos and Levantines and the Jewish population grew from 114, in 1601 to 3,000 by 1689. Jews came to be the most important nation living in Livorno. Spanish and Portugese became the official language of Jewish merchants in Livorno and remained so until the late 18th century.
Modigliani's Jewish background was a source of pride for him, influencing many of his works (the 1915 sketch A Woman, Heads and Jewish Symbols comes particularly to mind). Equally, his Italian origins were important for Modigliani, his myth claiming that his final words, as he lay dying of tubercular meningitis on his bed in 1920 at 35, were "cara Italia," "beloved Italy." Tony McNeill notes that Italians, perhaps the single largest immigrant group by nationality in Third Republic France, were subjected to considerable hostility:
[M]any European immigrants in France faced fear, hostility and racism and found their integration into French life to be a difficult process. Anti-immigrant prejudice was rife. For example, the Belgians recruited into the coal, iron and steel industries of northern France were often pejoratively described as pots de beurre or vermines (Bernard: 1993 p.20). Here is an extract from La Patrie from 1896 that gives a flavour of early French attitudes to Italian immigrants:
Ils arrivent telles des sauterelles, du Piémont, de la Lombardie-Vénitie, des Romagnes, de la Napolitaine, voire de la Sicile. Ils sont sales, tristes, loqueteux. Tribus entières immigrant vers le Nord, où les champs ne sont pas dévastés, où on mange, où on boit. Ils s'installent chez les leurs, entre eux, demeurant étrangers au peuple qui les accueille, travaillant à prix réduit, jouant tour à tour de l'accordéon et du couteau. (Quoted in Mestiri: 1990 p.11)
Behind the hostility to immigrants was often the fear of l'invasion, the invasion of France by large numbers of foreigners who were seen as briseurs de grève, pushing down the wages of the honest and hard-working Français de souche, threatening the social order and the purity of French womanhood (Bernard: 1993 p.21).
The other fear was of l'inassimilablité, the concern that these immigrants would not integrate sucessfully into French society. Italian and Polish immigrants, for example, were attacked for their religious devotion by a French working class that was no longer regularly attending Church (mass, confession etc.) and given the derogatory term Christos (mainly the Italians) or calotins (mainly the Polish). Their religion - Catholicism not Islam or Judaism - hampered immigrants' integration into French society.
This hostility inevitably led at points to violence. The economic downturn that occurred in the late nineteenth century led to a rise in violent xenophobia and attacks on France's immigrants were frequent. Anti-Italian riots, for example, occurred in Marseilles in 1881 and Lyon in 1894. The most notorious attack on immigrants occurred in 1893 when a mob, inflamed by the assassination of President Carnot by an Italian anarchist, set upon Italian immigrants in the town of Aigues-Mortes in southern France killing eight Italians and injuring many more.
Although the exhibition didn't comment on it, Modigliani's doubly foreign origins--Jewish in a demographically if not officially Catholic France, Italian in a somewhat xenophobic France--must have played a major role in his somewhat chilly reception in France. This was undisclosed by the exhibition, which concentrated on his memorization as a child of entire passages of Dante and Nostradamus, his readings of Bergson and Nietzche and Wilde and D'Annunzio, his classical education in art, certainly his participation in the European discourses of impressionism and innovation in art. He was a participant in all manner of discourses at all sorts of scales, even non-Western discourses: artworks--West African, Polynesian, Khmer; paintings, carvings, statuary--taken from the new French empire and exhibited at the Musée de l'Homme inspired him.
The Ocean's Bridge website links to images of many of the artworks included in the AGO exhibition.
The first work of note that I saw, on entering the exhibition area, was 1918's Pierrot, a self-portrait in the style of the commedia dell'arte character of the same name, portraying Modigliani the man as a misunderstood and isolated individual. This mood was continued by the 1898 Small Tuscan Road: the painting, divided by a road in the foreground, with a small low house to the left and the mountains in the distance, conveyed a sort of uneasy mood. 1908's Nude with A Hat (Recto) is the first to really fit alongside Modigliani's alignment with the demi-monde of Paris, showing a nude women wearing a large hat and posing for the viewer seductively, but with her pursed lips and overlarge breasts and yellowish skin only causing the viewer concern.
The Caryatids were the next major collection of works featured in the show. A category of drawings deriving their names from Greek religious statuary, the Caryatids were drawn between 1909 and 1914. These colonnes de tendresse were also influenced by expressionism and African statuary. Standing Nude with Crossed Arms was the Caryatid that impressed me the most, drawn entirely in various shades of blue--I was reminded of Jarman.
Woman With a Loincloth (1908) is drawn in red chalk on paper. Notable for its very angular lines and blurred edges, Woman manages to be a very human and emotive work. The neighbouring 1913 Red Bust reminded me of Attic pottery, with the red figure of a woman staring out against a black background. In junior high art class, we did similar works--a layer of black crayon under a layer of orange crayon, the second layer then carefully scratched out.
M. saw someone who he thought was Atom Egoyan. I liked The Sweet Hereafter, so I went back with M. to confirm the sighting. Yes, he was touring the Modogliani exhibition last Saturday. I followed my peers' counsel and resisted the urge to compliment Egoyan on his work.
There was an alcove containing sketches done in various media. The crayon-and-paper The Acrobat (done around 1912) was one of the first to interest me, featuring a figure in tights pointing towards the background. L'Estatico--a sketch done in graphite on paper in 1916--was powerful. (1914's Anadiomena, in contrast, was completely opaque.) The 1915-1916 sketch Adam is notable for its frontal nudity of the first man in Abrahmic myth, while the 1915 Woman, Heads, and Jewish Symbols contains what is--for me--the most explicit statement of Modigliani's Jewish roots in his works, with symbols and slogans repeated. The Portrait of Jeanne Hetenval stood out in the alcove for its incrredible level of detail. Inscribed in crayon and charcoal, the highly detailed head of Mme Hetenval challenges the viewer directly.
Five of Modigliani's 25 statues are currently on display in Toronto. This is a relatively small body of work, despite his early inclination towards sculpture. He only began in 1907, with the help of the Romanian Constantine Brancusi, casting first in clay then in bronze; he stopped altogether in 1914, whether because of wartime shortages or his deteriorating health or both factors. The statues were all of heads, all marked strongly by West African and Ancient Egyptian models, all slightly asymmetrical. Modigliani manages to communicate distinct personalities.
After passing through a room filled with children and adults trying to make their own sketches of Modigliani's works or in Modigliani's style, we four arrived at the central room of the exhibition and the myth, exploring Modigliani's presence in Montparnasse. He moved there from Montmartre in 1909, becoming a prominent figure at major cafes like La Rotonde and La Dôme, meeting with artists and expatriates coming from across Europe, doing paintings and sketches there for money. (Too, Modigliani's Jewish origins became more prominent in this time period, as he encountered Jewish expatriates--Léon Indenbaum, Chana Orloff, Oscar Miestchaninoff, Jacques Lipschitz--in the context of a Third Republic where Jewish identity was politicized.) Photographs of the art studio at 8, rue de la Grande-Chaumiere shared with his lover Jeanne Hebuterne were also on display.
Paintings of many of Modigliani's friends feature prominently in the exhibition, as they well should given Modigliani's remarkable ability to capture personalities in even his most styelized works. There is a stark and powerful monochromatic 1916 painting of Indenbaum, stylized with his pursed lips and long head. There are several sketches of the British Theosophist Beatrice Hastings (the 1915 Portrait of Mrs. Hastings and Beatrice Hastings in Front of a Door, the 1916 Portrait of Beatrice Hastings); this final painting, like Standing Nude with Crossed Arms, is done entirely in shades of blue. A 1919 painting of Lunia Czechowska, included in the exhibition, features prominently in the AGO's publicity material; the viewer is informed that the two were never lovers, though they were "soulmates." (Indeed, the viewer is told elsewhere that with the exception of Hebuterne, Modigliani never painted his lovers.) One can notice Modigliani's portraiture evolving over time, becoming marked by sharp transitions between colours and fine gradations within specific swathes. 1917's The Blue Top stands out, as does the 1917 Portrait of a Girl done entirely in dark reds and browns, and the 1916-1917 portrait of Jean Cocteau that shows the master sitting in a high-backed chair. Modiglani's most affecting portraits tended to be those done of anonymous sitters--in 1917, The Italian Woman, in 1918--Young Seated Boy With Cap, The Beautiful Shop Girl, The Little Peasant, The Servant Girl. The details of their identity have been lost, but Modigliani managed to preserve their essences in their uncertain but bold approaches to the camera.
Modigliani's nudes were on display in the final room of the exhibition, across from a portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (who had a showing in 2000 of some 60 works). He painted some 30 nudes over 1916 and 1917; his only solo exhibition, of these nudes, was closed down by the Paris police on charges of obscenity. Frankly, it's easy to understand why, since all of his nudes--most particularly Nude with Coral Necklace, Reclining Nude (The Dream), Reclining Nude--exude a remarkable warmth and sensuality.
Across the hall from Beyond the Myth's exit was the Reading Portraits exhibition, a small show containing portraits from the AGO's collection. Portraits, the introductory placard claimed, are marked by the gap between ideals and realities, by the many ways in which a person's essence can be communicated in ways not necessrily closely related to physical realities.
Augustus John's 1917 Lady Cynthia Asquith, Lady in Black is a simple painting, showing a woman in a simple black dress and short curly hair, with eyes looking away from the view, left hand on her right shoulder, right hand on her lap. Glyn Warren Philpot's near-contemporary 1914 Guillaume Rolland, a Young Breton shows a young man standing, dressed in provincial costume (black pants, wide belt, pinkish blouse), arms by his side, looking directly at the viewer. Jean-François Millet's 1838 Louise Jumelin and Jan Kupecki's Study for Self-Portrait with Son Christian Johann Friedrich are much older works, portraits of ordinary people; Sir Joshua Reynolds' 1778-1779 George Townshend, 7th Viscount Townshend is a straightforward exercise in national propaganda, showing the victorious Field Marshal on the field of battle; Eugène Devériau's 1839 Portrait of Comte Henri de Cambis d'Orsan shows a fashionable noble of Orleanist France. The 1920s portraits of Jacques Villon--notably 1927's Louisette--stand out for their distinct colour schemes.
The exhibition does little to dispel the Modigliani myth, that whole complex of ideas completely and enjoyable summed up by Moulin Rouge. I don't care--the art and its display are just that good. If you're in the Toronto area before the exhibition leaves, you really should go see it.
