Modigliani revival at the Tate Modern

What a creative life and a tragic death Amadeo Modigliani (1884–1920) had. He left home in Livorno Italy in 1906, at 21, with money from his mother, and moved to the centre of the art world: Paris. He was en­grossed by the works he saw, from artists ranging from the late Paul Cézanne to his cont­emporary Kees van Dongen.

Modigliani lived at various addresses in the boh­emian district of Montmartre, not far from Pablo Picasso’s home. In the early days in Paris, Amadeo’s sub­jects included figures from the demimonde eg circus performers. But during the 13 years that followed, he struggled with the dark side which, in turn, strengthened his art.

Modigliani’s years of poverty were clear from the beginning – he was tubercular, hungry and poor. The consequences of his short and disordered life have resulted in debates amongst scholars, museums, dealers, auction houses and private collectors. His official cat­al­ogue raisonné is no longer 100% trusted because of disputed forg­eries and subsequent court cases. But at least the authenticity of Dr Paul Alexandre’s wonderful collection of Modiglianis was never chall­enged.

The very handsome Amadeus Modigliani

Now the Tate Modern in London has brought together drawings, paintings and sculptures by Modigliani which might help with understanding his art. All the early work done in Italy was destroyed at Modigliani’s own request. So the Tate Exhibition consists of paintings and carved stone sculpture done during his chaotic, artistic life in Paris.

The paintings were sensitively hung in the Tate Mod­ern galleries, with their colours creating a radiance. And the display ref­lected Amadeus’ progress over time. In 1909, he painted a very handsome portrait of his friend Paul Alexandre with layers of al­most Turner-like brushwork. That same year he depicted the youth he referred to as a Young Gypsy with a stylised geometric angularity, posing him with legs spread apart and hands loosely resting in his lap. In 1918, Modigliani painted the Little Peasant with a simp­lif­ied classicism but left him with the same rounded hands and arms a la Paul Alexandre but in a lighter palette.

What about the 12 nudes in the same section of the Tate, perfectly timed to mark the 100-year annivers­ary of Modigliani’s only solo show. That exhibit, at Gallerie Ber­the Weill, was closed by police on its first day because of indecency. The heroic Mrs Weill’s im­pressive list of artists included Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Georges Braque, Kees van Dongen, Maurice Utrillo and Suzanne Valadon.

Paul Alexandre by Modigliani

Tate is showing the 1919 Self-Portrait owned by Brasil’s Museu de Arte. This paintings crys­tallised everything Modigliani saw in his idol Cezanne, but made it person­al. Plus paintings of the saucy Maud Abrantès stand out. She may have been the mistress of both Modigliani and his patron Alexandre, but was married to an art dealer. Maud was probably the model for The Jewess, a painting that was inspired by the Fauves. Modig­liani must have loved The Jewess; he exhibited it in the 1908 Salon des Indép­endants.

Was being Jewish in post-Dreyfus Paris a problem? Modigliani was not interested in the issue! While there were several memoirs that des­c­ribed Modigliani’s passionate response to anti-Semitism, there was no evidence that he felt himself an “outsider”. This cosmop­olitan family had come from France, Tunisia, Italy, Algeria and Sardinia; national boundaries melted away. In Paris, his friends included many Jewish artists eg Lipchitz, Soutine, Chagall, Zad­kine, Nadelman and Kisling, artists of mixed origin eg Diego Rivera, and non-Jews like Picasso, Laurens, Gris and Cocteau. If he was consid­ered Italian, it was because of his dashing, aris­tocratic style.

The end was tragic. Amadeus’s young lover Jeanne Hébuterne was 36 weeks pregnant with their second baby. Suffering from acute kidney pain and spitting blood, Modigliani lay in bed and a frightened Hébuterne huddled by his side in their Rue de la Grande Chaumière flat. They were cold that winter, hungry and messy. When he finally fell into a coma, Modigliani was carried to hospital and tended by nuns while friends surrounded him.

Amadeus died and the artist’s brother paid expenses for a lavish funeral, where thousands of people gathered behind a horse-drawn carriage bearing his flower-covered casket. As the funeral cortege passed by, Hébuterne leapt out the 5th storey open window and died on the footpath below. At Cimetière du Père Lachaise, the Jew­ish funeral was packed out. Hébuterne’s Catholic parents arranged their daughter’s tiny funeral early the next day.

Decades after her parents’ deaths, Amadeus’ daughter Jeanne wrote a book called Modigliani: Man and Myth. Jeanne described her father as the pampered and indulged youngest son in an eccentric Italian family, his own bankrupted father, and Amadeus’ near-death exper­ien­­ces in childhood from pleurisy and typhoid. Perhaps by choosing the life of a Bohemian artist, he was toughening himself up physically while saving his poetic soul.

Sleeping nude by Modigliani

Modigliani was my favourite C20th Bohemian; he was an emotionally intense portrait painter, poet, philosopher, a consumptive and an uncontrolled son and lover. But until I see the exhibition myself, I am relying on Frances Brent in Tablet, The Tate,  his daughter Jeanne’s book, Modigliani: Man and Myth and previous posts in this blog.

The Modigliani Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York just ended in Feb 2018. It was largely a pre-WW1 drawing show, focused on the coll­ection of Paul Alexandre, Modigliani’s first patron, the doctor who created a meeting place for artists in Mont­parnasse. The New York exhib­it­ion was accompanied by a catalogue published by Yale UP.