Amedeo Modigliani (Art Drop #12)

Long necks, long faces, vacant eyes. 'When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes,' he said. But there was a lot more to this artist than a romantic one-liner or his flamboyant bohemian life.

Amedeo Modigliani—Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (detail) 1919. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

If you’re an English-speaking American, you might be tempted to call him Mo-DIG-lee-ani. But it’s an Italian name, and the “g” is silent. In Italy it’s pronounced Moe-dee-lee-ani. But that’s not the most important thing to know about this very important artist.

Amedeo Modigliani (7/12/1884—1/24/1920) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and draftsman, regarded by many as one of the great artists of the early 20th century. In 2017, there was an exhibit of his work called Modigliani Unmasked. The curator of that exhibit—whose name is Mason Klein, described Modigliani like this:

Part recluse, part extrovert; part Italian Jew, part French cosmopolitan; part sculptor, part painter; part bohemian, part aristocrat; part middle-class respectability, part tainted by family bankruptcy: Modigliani’s identity was more complex than is popularly thought.

His dramatic life story has long captured the public’s imagination. His drug use, his artistic innovation, his lovers. His friendships with Picasso, Renoir, Brancusi, and other major figures of the early 20th-century art scene.

His affair with Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom he met while she was on her honeymoon. His tragic relationship with the mother of his child Jeanne Hébuterne, who flung herself from a 5th-floor window the day after he died at age 35 of tubercular meningitis.

His life was tailor-made for a movie.

And indeed there was one in 2004 starring Andy Garcia in the title role, which I enjoyed quite a lot.

But before I knew anything about Modigliani’s life, I fell in love with his paintings. Especially his 1919 vacant-eyed portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne in a white camisole.

Perhaps we’ll never fully understand why Modigliani often painted the eyes of his subjects as empty sockets. “When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes,” is the quote most know him by. Which may tell us a little something about his intentions.

And yet, it’s impossible to look at those vacant-eyed portraits without seeing the influence of African tribal masks, ancient Cycladic sculpture, and even the masks worn by actors in ancient Greek drama.

The cultural appropriation in his work

is a byproduct of colonization, which brought artifacts from plundered cultures into Western consciousness, making those influences available to Europeans.

Some artists exploited the “exotic” nature of tribal art. But Modigliani, a multicultural mixed-bag himself, identified with their so-called otherness.

His mask-like paintings evoke a transcendent eternal presence, which belies individual identity just as tribal and other ancient art does. Maybe that’s why some of us find them both captivating—and haunting.

Ahead of his time

Naturally, this artist who proved to be far ahead of his time died penniless. His one solo exhibit featured several nudes, which seem mild by today’s standards. But in the early 1900s, his paintings shocked the art-going public. Local authorities called the exhibit obscene and closed it down. Shortly thereafter, his other paintings were removed from the galleries that displayed them.

Today, you can purchase a painting by the penniless Modigliani for $157 million dollars. No doubt, he and Vincent Van Gogh—another great artist who died penniless— are hanging out in the art-world equivalent of rock-and-roll heaven. I’m sure they’re having a drink together and laughing out loud about the irony of it all.

©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill

Thanks for reading/listening to today’s Jazprose Art Drop, presented by The Jazprose Diaries.

(If you’d like to know more about why Modigliani painted eyes the way he did, check out this 8-minute video on YouTube. Today’s Art Drop relied on information from Indigo ArtBox. For more about Modigliani’s otherness, check out the two-and-a-half-minute video from Modigliani Unmasked below.)