Looking at Modigliani
Sunday July 9, 2006
"A Modigliani nude always wears its colour like a fake tan ... "Modigliani is an unpleasantly meek and bland artist ...he was less than the sum of his influences, which run from Botticelli, Pontormo and Titian to Cézanne, Gauguin and Picasso..." Get the impression the art critic Adrian Searle doesn't like Modigiliani? As Searle says in his review of the Modigiliani exhibition at the Royal Academy in London: "Confronted by his work, I find myself moving on to something else as quickly as I can. He's like an unfortunate acquaintance one can never entirely shrug off." So why would you bother to read Searle's review? Well, Searle explains his views, he's not simply scathing. It could be useful next time you're faced with a painting you don't like by someone you do.
More on Modigiliani:
• Adrian Searle's article on Modigiliani in The Guardian
• Details of Modigliani exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (8 July to 15 October 2006)
• Articles in RA magazine on Modigiliani: Naked Ambition and A Cult Artist
• Artists in 60 Seconds: Amedeo Modigliani
Photo: Nelson Kon: Amedeo Modigliani, Self Portrait, 1919 Oil on panel, 100x64.5", Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Comments
Quote from attached Royal Academy article by a different author than Searle…
“..He [Modigliani] 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.”
The female torso, chest especially, and the hollow female skin-covered skull, are design elements he beautifully colors and places onto the canvas.
Yet, I have to agree with Mr. Searle’s more indepth critique…I admire Modigliani’s style and coloring, but his work leaves me chilled, unlike, say, the nudes of Michelangelo which somehow show whole persons with souls.
Perhaps my adoptive son’s biological father saw his underage teen mom (likely in the local pornography system – i.e. a girl for rent) —perhaps he, trained in viewing the descendants of Modigliani’s soulless woman, saw no problem in renting a female tool for his pleasure.
Many of Modigliani’s female portraits are precursors to the very common soulless pornographic or semi pornographic half nude women visible daily from TV, billboards, Internet sites, and movies.