Word: modigliani
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Aboard were Commen-clatore Ettore Modigliani.* as custodian of the pictures, and Signer Umberto Malossi, Fascist Police Inspector-General. Off the coast of Portugal the da Vinci wired that she was caught in a gale, then for two days while she was tossed and harried no word was heard. Captain Angelo Sturlese was on the bridge for 72 hours, the SOS of other ships sounding in his ears. When the Italian steamer Senatore Dali, foundering nearby, sent an SOS, Captain Sturlese despatched his tug to her. Dr. Modigliani in an ecstasy of apprehension made repeated trips to the hold...
...Modiglianis were pompously hung and framed. Well-tailored attendants mingled with the visitors, distributed lavish programs. The lenders of the canvases to the exhibition included Editor Frank Crowninshield of smartchart Vanity Fair, Businessman-Collector Chester Dale, Dealers Paul Reinhardt and John F. Kraushaar, Capitalist Sam Adolph Lewisohn. They gave an aura of respectability to the exhibition which might have amused the little, consumptive painter. People who would not have been seen talking with him now pay $20,000 for his canvases, eulogize him over their teacups as a great genius. For in his day Modigliani was the butt of ribaldry...
Laymen's fingers are still pointed. People still ask to be told the sense of what they like to call Modigliani's "daubs." And they have been answered variously. Recently an absurd attempt was made to apply the yardstick to Modigliani, to prove that he did not distort human anatomy.* Others admit the distortion but defend it by saying that the Egyptians distorted, as did El Greco, the Italian primitives. The merits of Modigliani, they add, are many: his color is finely schematic; his line is sensitive and delineates the sitter's character with wit and insight...
Other critics explain the vogue of Modigliani as that of an essentially minor painter who led a pathetic life in a romantic quarter of Paris, died young under unusual circumstances, painted startlingly and individually if not well, was handsome...
...Dale applied the yardstick. The wife of Businessman-Collector Chester Dale, she writes articles for magazines, recently published a book on Modigliani...