Lancette Lancette Arts Journal |
Art Reviews From our Archive |
October 2004 |
Modigliani: Beyond the Myth is at the AGO until January 23, 2005
Alidë Kohlhaas
In the early days of my initiation into serious painting, Amedeo Clemente Modigliani counted among the important artists to study from the period when Paris was the toast of art. Then, sometime after the mid-1960s, he vanished from the horizon of art influence. Perhaps this came about because figure painting became passé. For whatever reasons, this lack of attention really was a loss to the education of young artists on the one side, and on the other, to the public, who only got to see the odd portion of some of his works that had become a cliché—the elongated faces of some of the women he painted.
Now the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is home to a very exciting and revealing exhibition, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth. The myth, of course, is woven around the man's bohemian lifestyle, his heavy drinking, the taking of drugs, the early death from tuberculosis, and the dramatic suicide of his highly pregnant last companion only days after he died. Since Modigliani made only a bare living from his works, and his daily struggle to survive as a stranger in Paris made good copy, young artists of later generations took him as a lifestyle role model. The myth had been born that true artists had to suffer, and live in squalid surroundings.
Unfortunately, these were the wrong aspect of this complicated man that many artists have since attempted to imitate. Until recently, no-one really looked at the large body of work Modigliani produced, at the influences that other art forms had on him that gave his works a defining personality and quality. The present exhibit leaves no doubt what influenced this, today, underrated artist. One can only hope that it will lead to a . . .
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