On Modigliani at the Barnes
Which you need to see for yourself posthaste.
My review of “Modigliani Up Close” at the Barnes Foundation is in print in the Winter 2023 issue of Root Quarterly. I encourage readers to buy the issue, or better yet, subscribe with the code ARTFRIEND. An excerpt:
Truly, this is Modigliani unmasked, the real artist behind the legend, pounding away at scrap construction limestone as his beleaguered lungs struggled to keep up. (His life was bookended with childhood pleurisy and death by tubercular meningitis.) Two different credited authors pore over the mons veneris of a nude painted in 1917 on loan from the Guggenheim, admiring how “an additional, brighter blue-gray layer applied in large swaths over the surface… complements the nude’s pink-orange flesh and is visible along the borders of the body and facial features, defining shadows and adding vibrancy to the image.” It is as if some saintly class of art-priests has driven the whores of identity politics out of the scene.
This is the last weekend to catch the show at the Barnes.
Oh, but what do visual considerations matter, Franklin? Surely the point is what paintings mean or what their message is. What was Modigliani's artist's statement, by the way? Stick to essentials.
It is well to remember that Modigliani died at 35, that he made his career in a country not his own, and that he had serious health issues which ultimately killed him. And yet, he made his mark and left a significant body of work. Naturally there was his talent, but there had to be more than that.