ART: Modigliani’s Mode

By the end of the 17th Century the halcyon art of Italy had completely decayed. From, the death of Michelangelo to the present day, with the exception of a colorful but shallow digression at Venice, good Italian painting has been practically nonexistent. But in 1884, a sickly boy was born in the Ghetto at Leghorn, Tuscany, to Flaminio Modigliani, son of a Roman usurer. The boy was named Amedeo which means “love of God.” Under the guidance of his uncle Isaac described by one of his family as “a man of vast and disorderly culture” and a descendant of Philosopher Spinoza, Amedeo grew up, studious, passionate, grave. When he was 14 he had typhoid fever and in his delirium raved about the Renaissance, his longing to become a painter. This was the first indication of his esthetic bent. His mother, impressed, promised that he should go to art school. In 1906 after a few years of study with mediocre landscapists, Modigliani went to Paris where he was described as a “serious looking student who read Dante and lived alone.” This solitude was short lived. Paris studios boiled with the revolutionary ideas of the Fauves (Wild Beasts)* and no intelligent young painter could ignore them. Modigliani quickly exhausted his Italian academism, delved into the cubism and Negro sculpture which preoccupied his new friends, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and Braque. He became alcoholic and consumptive, affected voluminous trousers, a gay scarf, a wide-brimmed black hat. He lived in grubby Montparnasse with one Jeanne Hebuterne who bore him a child. He was known as the poorest man in Paris. Meanwhile he painted steadily and achieved a personal style. Most of the 400 canvases he left are portraits.

When the War broke out in 1914 Modigliani coughed too much to be drafted. He stayed all night in the cafes, sketching for drinks, arguing passionately and with great wit. In one of the cafes he met the Polish poet Zborowski who saw that he was dying. Zborowski tried to sell some of Modigliani’s canvases. But no one wanted them, so he sold a trunk full of his own clothes and took the painter to Provence for his health. He improved slightly but once back in Paris he drank again, became so undermined that when an unusual cold wave struck in December 1920 he died of influenza with the words “Cara, cara, Italia!” (Dear, dear Italy) on his lips. A few days later his mistress threw herself from a window. Friends of the painter wired his brother in Italy that he had died a pauper. The reply was: “Bury him as prince.” Modigliani was carried to his grave by the celebrities of Paris.

Last week in Manhattan the first one-man show of Modigliani was held. Among the 37 canvases, mostly portraits of his Paris friends, was one of his earliest heads and his last canvas, a large nude. Also shown was his last palette and a death mask taken in the hospital by his friends, the painter Kisling and the sculptor Lipshitz. It reveals a small ascetic face with sunken eyes, a very thin nose.

The Modiglianis were pompously hung and framed. Well-tailored attendants mingled with the visitors, distributed lavish programs. The lenders of the canvases to the exhibition included Editor Frank Crowninshield of smartchart Vanity Fair, Businessman-Collector Chester Dale, Dealers Paul Reinhardt and John F. Kraushaar, Capitalist Sam Adolph Lewisohn. They gave an aura of respectability to the exhibition which might have amused the little, consumptive painter. People who would not have been seen talking with him now pay $20,000 for his canvases, eulogize him over their teacups as a great genius. For in his day Modigliani was the butt of ribaldry. Derisive fingers were pointed at the elongated necks, piggy eyes, distorted sloping shoulders, characteristic of the Modigliani manner.

Laymen’s fingers are still pointed. People still ask to be told the sense of what they like to call Modigliani’s “daubs.” And they have been answered variously. Recently an absurd attempt was made to apply the yardstick to Modigliani, to prove that he did not distort human anatomy.* Others admit the distortion but defend it by saying that the Egyptians distorted, as did El Greco, the Italian primitives. The merits of Modigliani, they add, are many: his color is finely schematic; his line is sensitive and delineates the sitter’s character with wit and insight; his best canvases show the feeling of a real primitive; he is akin to the Siennese, a true Italian.

Other critics explain the vogue of Modigliani as that of an essentially minor painter who led a pathetic life in a romantic quarter of Paris, died young under unusual circumstances, painted startlingly and individually if not well, was handsome.

*Matisse, Braque, Dufy, Van Dongen, Vlaminek, Friesz.

*Dale applied the yardstick. The wife of Businessman-Collector Chester Dale, she writes articles for magazines, recently published a book on Modigliani.

Diptych

In the Cleveland Museum of Art is a little ivory panel (10 in. x 12 in.) carved with the story of the sufferings of Jesus. Because it is divided into two sections it is called a diptych. The Museum bought it last year from Manhattan Dealer Demotte and, delighted, published a brochure stating that this diptych was made in the 11th Century at Liege, said it was the most valuable diptych in the U. S., that it cost $30,000.

Sometime after the sale, a Viennese dealer called upon Dealer Demotte, told him of a diptych he had seen in the treasury of Zagreb Cathedral in Jugoslavia.

It was charming, he declared, and could be bought for $20,000. Dealer Demotte laughed, said that he had already bought that diptych, paid only $10,000. The bewildered Viennese returned to Europe, went to Zagreb, investigated. He found that a copy had recently been substituted for the original.

Last month Leonida Pitamitz, Jugoslav Minister to the U. S., made a delicate call upon Frederic Allen Whiting, secretary of the Cleveland Museum. Politely he informed Director Whiting that the diptych in the museum was stolen-goods, that it belonged to the Zagreb Cathedral. Director Whiting removed the diptych to a safe deposit vault, awaited developments.

Last week Minister Pitamitz sped by motor from Washington to Cleveland. There the Museum authorities received him with great formality. Ceremoniously they gave the diptych back to Jugoslavia.

The U. S. State Department has exonerated the Museum and Dealer Demotte. Latest suspect is a Paris art dealer who is “traveling.”