Word: modiglianis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...across America or upon the Continent--to find a better 19th century collection this summer." For those readers who prefer deeds to words, a rather partial inventory of the collections shows: 12 water-colors and drawings by Cezanne, and oils by the following: Gauguin (1), Monet (3), Picasso (3), Modigliani (2), Renoir (4), Van Gogh (3), Degas (2), Rousseau (1) and Toulouse-Lautrec...
...Modigliani died at 35, of drink, hashish, poverty and TB. Two days later his mistress-and the mother of his daughter -killed herself; the child was raised by her paternal grandmother and aunt, who always spoke in reverent tones of "your poor father." Jeanne Modigliani grew up to be an art scholar, and now she has done a prim but thorough job of sorting out her father's miserable binge of a life...
...Modigliani, Man and Myth has very little myth about it, and not even much of the man, but it is authoritative, and it contains more than a hundred reproductions of Modigliani's paintings, drawings and sculptures. The author went to those who had known him-both "the indulgent sentimentalists, who melt as they tell of the handsome and elegant young man, so lordly, so cultivated and so exquisitely kind-hearted," and "the intolerant, for whom the artist does not excuse the unbearable buffoon, who could neither stand alcohol nor keep away from it, the weak author...
Gradually there emerges the picture of someone dreadfully sick and sad. Born in Leghorn of a Jewish business family, Modigliani romantically claimed descent from Spinoza. He escaped from his bourgeois surroundings into adolescence, studied in Venice, bummed in Paris, took to art. It was a spiraling fall to greatness. Living ever more loosely, he froze his style to crystalline perfection. His carvings of heads and figures look like keen white refinements of African idols-which also influenced his pictures...
...sculptures, Modigliani stole subway ties and building blocks. Once some workers came upon him carving one of their blocks in the dawn light, and summarily built it into the foundations while he wept and stormed. For his portraits he would charge ten francs a sitting, "and a little alcohol." His nudes were of girls that were close to him, done with restrained appreciation. "For anyone who knew only the nudes and portraits of Modigliani's last years," his daughter writes, the artist's life "would seem . . . the quiet manifestation of a mild optimism." He found peace...