‘It’s odd,’ Picasso once mused, ‘but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre and the boulevard Raspail.’ He obviously suspected his friend of being a stage bohemian. There is, indeed, a touch of Puccini about Modigliani’s life — the poverty, his film-star good looks, the drink and drugs and poignant early death, all set against a picturesque Parisian backdrop of Montmartre and Montparnasse. It’s La bohème but with the painter himself, surely a tenor role, taking the place of the tragic, tubercular Mimì.
Whether or not he lived out a cliché, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) certainly painted to a set recipe — even if it was one largely of his own devising. The new exhibition at Tate Modern, nicely hung and ingeniously arranged though this is, can’t quite disguise the fact that as an artist Modi was highly repetitive.
Mind you, his formula is good — at least in small servings. One or two prime Modiglianis are a fine sight: the linear design is rhythmic, the application of paint succulent, the colours zing (apparently, the quality diminished when he painted under the influence of hashish). But when a row of similar works are lined up, side by side, you notice that his sitters have been Modigliani-ed. The elongated neck, almond eyes — often blank and pupil-less — and swan neck are combined with just enough individuation to make each approximate to a likeness.
When you get to the nudes, everything really goes pear-shaped (sometimes literally). These aren’t quite erotica — the artfully schematic faces save them from that. But they belong to an area of winsome early modernism that brings Playboy centrefolds to mind. After you’ve seen a few — and the Tate has corralled a sizable group — you start to think, ‘Oh no, not another!’
It’s off-putting when looking at these to recall that Modigliani was a brutal, angry drinker whose behaviour to his lovers was so bad that these days he’d be drummed out of public life.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in