Exhibition of the week Modigliani
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk). Until 2 April
Amedeo Modigliani’s life story is “pure romantic bohemian”, said Matthew Collings in the London Evening Standard. Born to a Jewish family in Livorno in 1884, he suffered from tuberculosis from a young age, yet still harboured a burning ambition to be an artist. And in 1906, to pursue his dream, he moved to Paris, where he lived in “dreadful poverty”, womanising, drinking and smoking hashish. This decidedly irresponsible lifestyle took its toll; he “rotted away” physically, eventually dying at the age of 35. But as this “great” new exhibition at Tate Modern demonstrates, his “intense, shockingly short life” yielded a wealth of brilliant art. It’s the largest retrospective of Modigliani’s work yet seen in the UK, with more than 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures, as well as a virtual reality installation that lets visitors experience the sordid reality of his Parisian studio – a vibrant showcase for his “constantly lively” and “experimental” art – that provides a comprehensive picture of his creativity.
Beyond the “almond-shaped” eyes and “swan-like” necks of Modigliani’s figures lies an undeniable “darkness”, said Steve Dinneen in City AM. For example, his likeness of fellow artist Léon Indenbaum, looking for all the world like a “Victorian post- mortem portrait”, is utterly horrifying. Equally disturbing is the subject of one of his nude studies: it has the “passive expression of a slasher movie antagonist”. Yet although Modigliani mingled with Picasso, Chaïm Soutine and the like – he was a sort of “diarist of bohemian Paris” – he could never hope to match them as an artist. Few of the works here are “individually good enough to warrant much attention”, and suffer terribly by comparison with his contemporaries’ output.
Even more unsatisfactory from a modern perspective are the nudes with which Modigliani “scandalised” Paris, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. His approach to the female form was one of “Page Three-ogling literalness” and the “come-hither” looks in the eyes of the 12 nudes gathered here are simply “cringemaking”. However, for all these embarrassing missteps, there is much to enjoy in this show; the most successful works, such as The Little Peasant (c. 1918) or the “haunting” Marie (Marie, Fille du Peuple) (1918), have a “sense of timeless rightness”, while a series of portraits of his lover Jeanne Hébuterne, executed shortly before his death, capture a “quasi-classical feeling of serenity”. He may have had his limitations, but at its best, Modigliani’s work still packs a “powerful emotional punch”.