Modigliani the man was described by his friends and patrons as self-destructive, temperamental and aggressive, but Modigliani the artist produced serene, sophisticated and elegant portraits. Nothing of his uncontrolled life ever found his way into his paintings. Whereas his art does not tell much about his life, it has a lot to tell about his deep sense of artistic responsibility and his ethos of beauty.
Modigliani the Man, an Italian Bohemian in Paris
With a character rooted in his Jewish and Italian heritage, Modigliani found his real home in Paris, where he arrived in 1906 and where he joined an extraordinary group of artists and writers. His chaotic and self-destructive life would be dominated by his addiction to drink and drugs – absinthe, ether and hashish – added to lifelong tuberculosis that eventually killed him.
In Paris he moved from one squalid house to another, eating only sardines flushed down with wine and whiskey. He moved violently from one relationship to another; from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and the feminist writer Beatrice Hastings to the French-Canadian Simone Thiroux and the self-sacrificial Jeanne Hébuterne.
This is what Beatrice Hastings said about Modigliani: “A complex character. A pig and a pearl. Met in 1914 at a crémerie. I sat opposite him. Hashish and brandy. Not at all impressed. Didn’t know who he was. He looked ugly, ferocious, greedy. Met again at the Café Rotonde. He was shaved and charming”.
Modigliani’s Independent Style
Although Modigliani didn’t transform the course of art as Futurists and Cubists did, his artistic impact has remained great to this day because of the individuality of the artist and of his work.
He stood in the very centre of the artistic life of his time, but at the same time he was resistant to the varied artistic streams he was exposed to in Paris.
He maintained a Renaissance, classic and humanistic approach to art, driven by his ethos whose foundations have to be found on the inviolable integrity of the person. His artistic independence is conceived by most art critics as part of his greatness. He frequently changed patrons, but he never changed his objective, which was that to form a piece of reality through a perfect, definitive and lasting image.
Self-destructive Life, Sophisticated Paintings
Modigliani was surronded by an impressive cast of artists and writers such as Max Jacob, Pablo Picasso, Maurice Utrillo, Moïse Kisling, Chaim Soutine, Diego Rivera and Jeab Cocteau among the most famous, who were the main subjects of Modigliani's paintings.
Very different from Modigliani the man, Modigliani the artist was always supremely in control of what he did. His charming and strangely tranquil art grew out of a reckless and convulsive life, marking the distance between a bohemian character and an artist in supreme control of his work.
There are not traces of his illness or his drinking or drug-taking or his womanizing character in his paintings. His life was not only a biography full of anecdotes and legends, it wasn’t just drunken nights with his friends or his stormy relationships or his illness. The reading key of Modigliani’s life has to be found in the way he fought back through his paintings, which allowed him a detachment from the tragedy of his own life.
Modigliani’s life as a man was tormented by illness and signed by addictions and violent relationships. As an artist, however, he differentiated himself in the artistic scene of the 20th century for the classic and elegant style of his portraits, as a result of his artistic commitment and his exemplary command of his vision of art.
Sources:
- Carol Mann, Modigliani, London and New York (Thames & Hudson) 1980.
- Werner Schmalenbach, Modigliani, Munich, Berlin, London and New York (Prestel) 2005.
- Jeffrey Meyers, Modigliani: a life, London (Duckworth), 2006.
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