Book Description

Amedeo Modigliani (1884--1920) is one of the greatest-and most misunderstood-artists of the twentieth century. His incisive portraits, erotically charged nudes, beautiful drawings, 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 groundbreaking book revises this approach toward Modigliani's art, presenting a convincing revisionist examination of the unique historical, social, religious, and cultural significance of his oeuvre.Modigliani: Beyond the Myth looks at the artist and his art from a variety of important perspectives: his proud heritage as a Sephardic Jew, whose spirituality embraced non-Western, classical, and Christian iconography while retaining his own ethnic identity; his critical engagement with the dialogues of the most radical of his avant-garde contemporaries (Picasso, Chaim Soutine, Henri Matisse, and Brancusi); the influence of tribal art and Judaism on his portraiture; the representation of the female nude in his works from a feminist cultural perspective; and the remarkable reception of his work in Italy during his lifetime. Lavishly illustrated and including a detailed chronology of his life, this fascinating book situates Modigliani anew in the history of twentieth-century art.BACKCOVER: ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Best book out there on Modigliani
For those who love the sensuous work of this early 20th century master, this text is the best on the market. The pictures span the entire short career (he died at age 36) of this artistic genius. There are stunning images throughout. The colour reproduction is superb, and the paper used is of the highest quality.
There are excellent, exhaustive descriptions of the artist's life, although the descriptions of many of the paintings are short. My only wish is that there were more nudes chosen for the exhibition, because no artist dead or alive painted a nude as beautiful or as provocative as Modigliani. The book is not cheap, but for those who admire this wonderful painter, the price is worth every penny and more. ... Read more

Book Description

Famous for his elongated forms, graceful portraits, and lush nudes, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is among the most loved of the extraordinary group of international artists who lived in Montparnasse in the early 20th century. Accompanying the first major Modigliani exhibition in the U.S. in over 40 years, the book moves beyond the romantic myths that have sprung up around the artist's tragically brief life to provide a fuller, richer understanding of his art, as well as the role of Montparnasse in the development of modern art.

In addition to 64 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Modigliani, the book features works by other Montparnasse artists such as Brancusi, de Chirico, Soutine, and Picasso. A special highlight is the inclusion of excerpts from a recently discovered, never-before-published novelette written by one of Modigliani's lovers about their experiences together. This striking volume provides a serious examination of Modigliani's work with extensive new documentation. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

This is a big book.
I never really had to draw artistically, but I spent years drafting mechanical objects, carefully placing straight lines in proportionally accurate positions. Having a book like this is much less embarrassing than signing up for a drawing class and having personal responsibility for drawings which don't look good, for whatever reason. The ability to draw is a major basis for art, as far as I am concerned, and a lot of the mechanics are obvious once a technique is successfully demonstrated. Anything you see in this book can be believed, and possibly even understood, artistically. This book also provides a short history in art, mainly about one person in Paris from 1906 to 1913, who had a friend who told him "Don't throw anything away." (Page 9 explains how "Paul Alexandre begged his friend not to destroy a single sketchbook, a single study.") There are, in addition to hundreds of drawings, some oil paintings reproduced in this book. On page 88 is one which was bought by the author's father because the person who commissioned The Amazon, 1909, rejected it (she might have thought that the eyes were too large; "The Baroness did not like her portrait very much and recognized herself in it still less when Modigliani decided at the last moment that he had to repaint her red jacket in yellow." p. 89), so it was purchased by Paul Alexandre.

First, I am impressed that black and white photographs from that era can be reproduced so large and well. The people (see pages 14, 18, 20, 33, 45, 49, 51, 72, 79, 107) and places in Paris (pages 22, 36, 68, 70, 71, 81), postcards from Livorno, Modigliani's native town (pp. 108-9) and even a book by Nietzsche, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra on page 63, fill these pages nicely. The manuscript notes reproduced on some pages are usually in French. Part of one is translated as "Equilibrium by means of opposite extremes." (p. 92). Earlier it was mentioned that Modigliani was not the type of person who kept track of things in a journal, so "these brief lines are particularly precious to us, even if, in the absence of any other documentation, we are unable to understand their full meaning." (pp. 92-93).

Secondly, there are explanations of the elements of Modigliani's sculptures and pictures. One feature which he drew a number of times, caryatids, are defined at the beginning of a section discussing those drawings. "Another setting which is theatrical in character is created by the architectural use of caryatids in place of pilasters or columns to support the entablature of a building." (p. 189) There are foldout pages of the drawings which follow, so that, after seeing the figures on page 193, and turning to page 194, the next page which is visible is page 199, which lists the contents of pages 195-198, which are hidden until 194 and 199 are folded out to reveal the four pictures inside side by side. This might be set up this way because plate 108 shows a Hermaphrodite caryatid, frontal view, which was supposed to be hidden from anyone who didn't know where to look for it. The other ones might have been hidden because they were smiling, or too luscious, and placed there as a special reward for those who happened to be reading the book slowly enough to discover them.

Thirdly, the next section, Sculptural heads, starting on page 237, doesn't have much to say, but the comparison of the drawings of Head in left profile runs from pages 255 to 263, without numbers on some pages. Plate 194, Head in left profile with earring; Blue crayon heightened with red gouache, is large and colorful. In the later sections of the book, there is a study with blue ink on page 368, and my favorite color in the book is the blue ink on pages 389, 390, and 392. This is, again, a series with pages that fold out, and the comparison with other pictures makes the blue particularly splendiferous. This book has 463 pages, and you need to read slowly enough to find them all. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

I keep looking at the noses.
Mostly this is a book of portraits, and the sculptures which are in this book are usually called "Head". The best of the sculptures, in The Tate Gallery in London, looks pretty tall for a head. Even the painted faces might seem a bit long, but I think the main tendency has been for Modigliani to paint noses which were longer than the noses on the people I see. Some of the faces have a nose which is defined by a distinctive curve on just one side of the nose, but the only profile view which I remember in this book is the 1909 Charcoal of Paul Alexander on page 25. Sometimes the color of the nose makes the tip of the nose seem like the only realistic part of the picture, as in the oil on canvas painting of Chaim Soutine in 1916 on page 43. The paintings on pages 44 and 45 provide a nice contrast between his use of lines on both sides of a long, straight nose (the guy) on the left and a single curve in Portrait of a Girl, 1916, on the right. There are four women with distinctly different noses on pages 82, 83, 84, and 85. I might not have noticed this so much, except that when I was most interested in art, someone told me that all my pictures looked the same, and I realized that the best one that I had ever done (it looked more like a close-up) was an ear. ... Read more

Book Description

The latest title in the Great Modern Masters series of monographs on leading 20th-century artists offers 71 full-color illustrations and a lucid introduction on Modigliani. The work of this Italian painter and sculptor has never been more popular than it is today. His sensuous nudes and intense, mannered portraits have become favorites of collectors and museum-goers alike. This affordably priced, colorful hardcover captures the intensity of his art with beautifully reproduced colorplates. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Crouching Caryatid, Hidden Eye
One of MODIGLIANI's greatest regrets was not continuing as a sculptor: the enigmatically sensuous "Crouching caryatid" in roughly-hewn boulder-like stone showcased his skills at making every sculpted surface part work together and at reducing forms to their most basic parts. His drawings and paintings put sculpturally-influenced emphases on the sitter's eyes, hands, mouth and shoulders: "Hanka Zborowska" had Brancusi-style tightly compressed features in a thin face looking like a 3-D polished metal sculpture. Avoiding naturalism and tending towards Art Nouveau, MODIGLIANI painted nudes, portraits and some rare landscapes: "Landscape at Cagnes" was painted vertically like head- and shoulders-sized portraits, with cypresses people-like in their oval leaves and waveringly thin-stemmed trunks. His painting became an art of expressive forms and geometrically simple lines influenced by African art and Cezanne: "Jeanne Hebuterne" pregnant, with an African mask face on a swan's neck symbolically linking the cerebral and the physical, a line forming the head-neck-shoulders axis, and a suite of curved arabesques forming the body; "Paul Alexandre," with Cezanne-type dominating and subsidiary hues deepening statue-like modeled light and shade against a green background and with Titian- and Velazquez-style formal stance and spread fingers; and "Raymond Radiguet," as a fraily sensitive 12-year-old, childlike and prophetic with one eye intensely blue and one blankly inward-looking. Author Carol Mann explains MODIGLIANI's art by a clearly written and nicely illustrated text. Her book works with Jose Maria Faerna's DE CHIRICO and MODIGLIANI to show the influences on the artist from the art of Jonathan Brown's VELAZQUEZ; the ART NOUVEAU books by Robert Fitzgerald, Edmund Vincent Gillon Jr or Paul Greenhalgh; the CEZANNE books by Henri Lallemand or Pavel Machotka; and Filippo Pedrocco's TITIAN.

Modigliani (Great Modern Masters)
This book is a wonderful introduction to Modigliani's work. I was impressed with the beauty and variety of full-page color plates of his paintings and sculpture. These illustrations are accompanied by text that describe not only the individual works, but also the progression, development and influential people/artists in Modigliani's lifetime. A breif bibliography is included. My interest in this artist has increased after reading this book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Do not read for true Modigliani facts, only opinion.
It is unfair of me to give a headline as above, and then write a paragraph of my opinion, but this is the necessary confines of our situation.

Modigliani's art is quite unique from all other art in Paris between 1900-1920. He was barely influenced by the other artists at the time. This is his strength. What the author of this book seems to want to prove is that Modigliani's work is somehow lessenned by its lack of innovativeness. Many of us disagree.


The author is also attempting to challenge well known truths of Modigliani's work. The author challenges Modigliani's worth as a sculptor and dedication to it. It is fairly widely known that Modigliani gave up sculpture because of health reasons, not dedication reasons.


The author also attempts to take Modigliani's art without taking in the effects of his life, so he has misunderstood Modigliani's nudes and sculpture as a whole.


I do not mean to say that the author is a poor writer, or even a poor art critic. He is a very poor judge of Modigliani, that is a fact. That is not just my opinion. ... Read more

Book Description

The Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is best known for his soulful portraits, sensual nudes, primativistic sculpture and his dazzling works on paper.This calendar features a full range of Modigliani's oeuvre, carefully selected from the major exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York.

... Read more

Reviews (1)

mannered elegance
This book brings together 40 prints of the artist's paintings in beautiful colour, as well as a lengthy text which precedes them, with photographs of Modigliani, and examples of his sculptures and caryatids. Werner presents M as a tragic figure since his health was poor - he suffered from tuberculosis all his life, and he died relatively young at 35, without receiving any substantial recognition of his work. Much is made of his excessive social life in Paris, though M was Italian, where he is said to have indulged in alcohol and hashish. He focused on painting after he was unable to continue with sculpture because of his lack of money, the difficulty in obtaining materials, and the affect of the stone dust on his weak lungs. Werner also tells us that M suffered from a psychoneurosis, and calls him a "solipsist who produced exclusively self-portraits, symbolic representations of his own tortured soul". However these arguments do not appear to relate to the nature of his painting. His work is calm, not tortured, and the idea that his infamous style of Expressionist distortion is meant to reveal a "paranoiac autism" seems silly. The photos we see of M show that he does not resemble his skittle-shaped, swan-necked, almond-eyed portraits. Even the notion that some of the subjects having closed eyes meaning an inner directed concentration based on a fear of the world, does not appreciate the stylistic choice he made to express his form of conception upon reality. He had trained as a draftsman and considered his work "illuminations", accentuating attributes to the point of caricature. The faces of his sculptures bear the same kind of visage. His work is both striking in his use of colour, where he favoured strong lines and prefered primary blacks and reds; and tender in the delicate way he treats the subjects, whether they be Parisian socialities, other artists, his two mistresses - Beatrice Hastings and Jeanne Hebuterne, or working class models like maids and peasants. What ultimately makes the work of Modigliani great is how one can return to the prints again and again, to revel in their mannered elegance, their sadness and beauty, and his unique balance between naturalism and abstraction. ... Read more

Book Description

Modigliani (1884 - 1920) was best known for his portraits of women and his nudes: elongated necks, almond shaped eyes, and a serene facial expression.Few artists created works of such classical beauty as he did.His nudes are painted with a timeless consideration for balance and composition and a superb handling of color.Most of his life as an artist, he lived among the avant-garde or Montparnasse group in Paris and was a member of the Bohemian circle that included such artists as Picasso, Brancusi, Juan Gris, and Utrillo ... Read more