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Modigliani: Beyond the Myth
Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is one of the best known - and most misunderstood - artists of the twentieth century. His incisive portraits, erotically charged nudes, elegant drawings of caryatids, and primitivistic sculpture have been admired for decades. Modigliani's work, however, has typically been examined in the limited context of his so-called bohemian, anti-intellectual lifestyle. This book revises this approach toward Modigliani's art, presenting a revisionist examination of the unique historical, social, religious, and cultural significance of his oeuvre.
Beyond the Myth looks at the artist and his art from a variety of important his proud heritage as a Sephardic Jew, whose spirituality embraced non-Western, classical, and Christian iconography while retaining its own ethnic identity; his critical engagement and melding of tribal and ethnographic art with Judaism in his portraiture; the representation of the female nude in his works from a feminist cultural perspective; the remarkable reception of his work in Italy after his death, and the failure of traditional art history to account for or analyze these important aspects of his life and work.
Beyond the Myth looks at the artist and his art from a variety of important his proud heritage as a Sephardic Jew, whose spirituality embraced non-Western, classical, and Christian iconography while retaining its own ethnic identity; his critical engagement and melding of tribal and ethnographic art with Judaism in his portraiture; the representation of the female nude in his works from a feminist cultural perspective; the remarkable reception of his work in Italy after his death, and the failure of traditional art history to account for or analyze these important aspects of his life and work.
- GenresArt
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 11, 2004
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 2, 2008
My review is based much more on my appreciation of the full-color reproductions of some of the judgiest of Modligliani's judgy women.
This is a great spotlight on a range of the artist's work, including his early sculptures and his drawings and paintings.
This is a great spotlight on a range of the artist's work, including his early sculptures and his drawings and paintings.
June 19, 2013
Mostly this kind of large-format color-plate extravaganza is good for having the visual material on hand for a side-by-side read of a biography. That's what I used it for, and it works beautifully in that way.
As time goes by, though, I've found that it's often also worth reading the essay material in these kinds of big-graphic volume; often, but not always. Sometimes the text is what you might expect, filler, meant only to fluff the size of an otherwise thin publication.
The five essays in the current Modigliani collection are in the worthwhile category, especially if the reader is unacquainted with the material at hand. A wealth of biographical, analytical, historical and compositional examination is covered, and from various viewpoints.
It does seem, however, that the guiding light of art-historical writing is the reach for a new angle, regardless of the actual value of said angle or approach. The quest for being the new Revisionist, the critic that turns the accepted paradigm upside down, seems overwhelming, impossible to resist.
Critics and analysts are falling all over themselves to re-evaluate Modigliani as a French citizen rather than a native Italian; to reclaim the Italian Frenchman as the Jew that he was born; to contrast that identity with his tendency to paint dolorous madonnas in the christian tradition; to rethink that by citing non-western influences; to re-examine his reputation as a womanizer; to refute the standard story of wild bohemianism that conventionally frames his biography. No matter how unfortunately true any of those may be.
I suppose that once you have an era whose history we can reliably trace, an artist's accepted biography, and a vetted portfolio-- an oeuvre standing the test of time-- there's precious little to add ... But that can't be allowed to happen or the art-historical combine would come to a standstill. You can't really just fill books with murmurs of appreciative acceptance, after all. Not only critics and academics, but wave after wave of graduating art-history specialists would have nothing to look forward to, no conventions to break down and rebuild.
For this reader, the Modigliani myth, although inconsistent, is factually coherent, credible. The "received notions" counted here in Maurice Berger's essay seem persuasively influential, hard to ignore :
..preeminently that of the tragic bohemian, but also such notions as the tortured genius, the narcotized dreamer struck down in the prime of his life, and the satyr smitten by his muse...
Any of those are going to have bearing on the work, and whether presented in caricature in earlier art history or not, can't really be disproved or ruled out.
After the million --modernist, expressionist, marxist, feminist, structuralist- analytical modes, someone needs to come up with something that is a Post-Revisionist discipline. All the paradigm-shifting earthquakes of successive, relentless revisions become, with time, tedious.
To this interested amateur, anyway.
As time goes by, though, I've found that it's often also worth reading the essay material in these kinds of big-graphic volume; often, but not always. Sometimes the text is what you might expect, filler, meant only to fluff the size of an otherwise thin publication.
The five essays in the current Modigliani collection are in the worthwhile category, especially if the reader is unacquainted with the material at hand. A wealth of biographical, analytical, historical and compositional examination is covered, and from various viewpoints.
It does seem, however, that the guiding light of art-historical writing is the reach for a new angle, regardless of the actual value of said angle or approach. The quest for being the new Revisionist, the critic that turns the accepted paradigm upside down, seems overwhelming, impossible to resist.
Critics and analysts are falling all over themselves to re-evaluate Modigliani as a French citizen rather than a native Italian; to reclaim the Italian Frenchman as the Jew that he was born; to contrast that identity with his tendency to paint dolorous madonnas in the christian tradition; to rethink that by citing non-western influences; to re-examine his reputation as a womanizer; to refute the standard story of wild bohemianism that conventionally frames his biography. No matter how unfortunately true any of those may be.
I suppose that once you have an era whose history we can reliably trace, an artist's accepted biography, and a vetted portfolio-- an oeuvre standing the test of time-- there's precious little to add ... But that can't be allowed to happen or the art-historical combine would come to a standstill. You can't really just fill books with murmurs of appreciative acceptance, after all. Not only critics and academics, but wave after wave of graduating art-history specialists would have nothing to look forward to, no conventions to break down and rebuild.
For this reader, the Modigliani myth, although inconsistent, is factually coherent, credible. The "received notions" counted here in Maurice Berger's essay seem persuasively influential, hard to ignore :
..preeminently that of the tragic bohemian, but also such notions as the tortured genius, the narcotized dreamer struck down in the prime of his life, and the satyr smitten by his muse...
Any of those are going to have bearing on the work, and whether presented in caricature in earlier art history or not, can't really be disproved or ruled out.
After the million --modernist, expressionist, marxist, feminist, structuralist- analytical modes, someone needs to come up with something that is a Post-Revisionist discipline. All the paradigm-shifting earthquakes of successive, relentless revisions become, with time, tedious.
To this interested amateur, anyway.
April 23, 2017
I took this book up on a whim after thinking randomly one day "you know you like the Modigliani 'collo lungo,' learn more about him!" I have to say, this book was an excellent introduction to Modigliani's oeuvre and life; the essays were very useful in helping to explain interpretative hallmarks used to see Modigliani as more than what early criticism saw him as: a drunken, degenerate reprobate and tortured artist whose work was to be seen as a gate into his tortured mind. In addition, the cataloged plates include sculpture, portraits, sketches, and nudes. I will admit that the essays could get a bit technical, vaguely-worded, and conjectural at times. Nonetheless, this book was a delightful pleasure to the eyes and the mind, I would recommend it!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews