Modigliani

He was impressed by trecento (13th century) artists, including Simone Martini (c.1284–1344), whose elongated and serpentine figures, rendered with a delicacy of composition and colour and suffused with tender sadness, were a precursor to the sinuous line and luminosity evident in the work of Sandro Botticelli (c.1445–1510). Both artists clearly influenced Modigliani, who used the pose of Botticelli’s Venus in The Birth of Venus (1482) in his Standing Nude (Venus) (1917) and Red-Haired Young Woman with Chemise (1918, p.16), and a reversal of this pose in Seated Nude with Necklace (1917, p.17

Conclusion

Modigliani’s love of traditional Italian art and his view of himself as working within and developing this tradition meant that his nudes were not intended to be radical or confrontational.

However, he could not avoid his perceptions being affected by the avant-garde art that was being produced around him and he was inspired by similar influences. This led him to draw together the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the revolutionary. It was this blending of old and new, along with the intensity of his passion and his desire to express himself freely, that enabled him to create a new and unique vision. Despite the tragedy that often accompanied his own short life, his nudes are joyous and appealing and have remained some of the most popular in modern art

Modigliani’s yearning for perfection in shape and form became an almost Platonic quest to find the essence of beauty beyond the attractiveness and sensuousness of the individual. He began to concentrate on balance, harmony, and continuity of form and to lessen the emphasis on heavy plasticity. He wanted to combine the solidity of sculpture with a weightless luminosity of colour and an elegance of line. This aesthetic aim went far beyond the expression of the eroticism of any single figure.

Picasso, too, had looked away from the depiction of particular individuals in his studies of abstract African sculpture, hoping to find something more enduring in an image than the ephemera of one moment of one person’s life. Modigliani’s depersonalizing of his images can also be seen as part of this artistic aim, especially evident in the portraits that he painted while in the south of France, which include twenty-five of Jeanne Hébuterne. He said, “What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal, but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race” (Doris Krystof, Modigliani).

Modigliani was also seeking to go beyond images of individuals to convey a timeless and eternal quality outside of everyday social morality and behaviour. This idea was inspired by the classical concept of beauty but also chimes with Cézanne’s abstraction and reduction of complex forms to their simplest essences. Chaim Soutine said of Cézanne, “Cézanne’s faces, like the statues of antiquity, had no gaze.”

Those that are awake appear calm and unconcerned or have blank eyes and are lost in an introspective world, undisturbed by the observer. Modigliani is primarily interested in the shapes of the bodies of the models, not their characters, and the blank or closed eyes emphasize this disengagement. Blank eyes also represent the inner-directed gaze and introspection that fascinated Modigliani; they also constitute a comment on the nature of voyeurism and observation.

Despite depicting his models as particular individuals, Modigliani makes surprisingly little attempt to engage with them emotionally or to portray them psychologically. He maintains an objectivity and a distance as artist, especially in his later nudes, and does not overtly attempt to solicit any specific emotional reaction from the viewer. This allows the viewer a freedom of response, but also distances the artist from any direct involvement in that response.

Manet’s Olympia caused outrage because it celebrated a confident and unashamed prostitute; most of Modigliani’s nudes are not coy and demure like Giorgione’s Venus or Titian’s nudes. Their attitude, along with the reduction of narrative and subject matter to nothing but the erotic body, presented for its own sake, were considered scandalous. It is ironic that these works by Modigliani, who deeply respected and wanted to belong to classical tradition, were seen not as High Art but as outrageous depictions of naked women.

Nude on a Blue Cushion (1917, p.49) also borrows the pose of Sleeping Venus, but she is not demurely sleeping, unaware that she is being watched. Her full red sensual lips highlight both her attractiveness and her desire. This makes her more vivid and tangible than Sleeping Venus despite being less realistic in style. Manet’s Olympia challenged the observer to enter into a visual transaction with the prostitute gazing back out of the picture, but the blue eyes of Modigliani’s figure add to this challenge a disconcerting surrealism. Her blank eyes stare, but stare blindly, so she is both confronting the viewer and remaining oblivious.

Eyes were a potent image in symbolism as the “mirrors of the soul,” representing introspection as well as observation. Modigliani was a keen reader of Symbolist poetry, often reciting verses from memory, and would have seen symbolist works by such artists as Odilon Redon (1840–1916), Edward Munch (1863–1944), and Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) at the Venice Biennial Exhibition in 1903.