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Modigliani: A Life
“People like us . . . have different rights, different values than do ordinary people because we have different needs which put us . . . above their moral standards.” —Modigliani
Amedeo (“Beloved of God”) Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s as well as the new approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso.
Jean Cocteau called Modigliani “our aristocrat” and said, “There was something like a curse on this very noble boy. He was beautiful. Alcohol and misfortune took their toll on him.”
In this major new biography, Meryle Secrest, one of our most admired biographers—whose work has been called “enthralling” ( The Wall Street Journal ); “rich in detail, scrupulously researched, and sympathetically written” ( The New York Review of Books ) —now gives us a fully realized portrait of one of the twentieth century’s master painters and his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks (“How beautiful he was, my god how beautiful,” said one of his models) . . . his training as an artist . . .and his influences, including the Italian Renaissance, particularly the art of Botticelli; Nietzsche’s theories of the artist as Übermensch, divinely endowed, divinely inspired; the monochromatic backgrounds of Van Gogh and Cézanne; the work of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi; and the primitive sculptures of Africa and Oceania with their simplified, masklike triangular faces, elongated silhouettes, puckered lips, low foreheads, and heads on exaggeratedly long necks.
We see the ways in which Modigliani’s long-kept-secret illness from tuberculosis (it almost killed him as a young man) affected his work and his attitude toward life ; how consumption caused him to embrace fatalism and idealism, creativity and death; and how he used alcohol and opium with laudanum as an antispasmodic to hide the symptoms of the disease and how, because of it, he came to be seen as a dissolute alcoholic.
And throughout, we see the Paris that Modigliani lived in, a city in dynamic flux where art was still a noble cause; how Modigliani became part of a life in the streets and a world of art and artists then in a transforming revolution; Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, et al.—and others more radical—Matisse, Derain, etc., all living within blocks of one another.
Secrest’s book, written with unprecedented access to letters, diaries, and photographs never before seen, is an extraordinary revelation of a life lived in art . . . Here is Modigliani, the man and the artist, seemingly shy, delicate, a man on a desperate mission, masquerading as an alcoholic, cheating death again and again, and calculating what he had to do in order to go on working and concealing his secret for however much time remained . . .
Amedeo (“Beloved of God”) Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s as well as the new approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso.
Jean Cocteau called Modigliani “our aristocrat” and said, “There was something like a curse on this very noble boy. He was beautiful. Alcohol and misfortune took their toll on him.”
In this major new biography, Meryle Secrest, one of our most admired biographers—whose work has been called “enthralling” ( The Wall Street Journal ); “rich in detail, scrupulously researched, and sympathetically written” ( The New York Review of Books ) —now gives us a fully realized portrait of one of the twentieth century’s master painters and his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks (“How beautiful he was, my god how beautiful,” said one of his models) . . . his training as an artist . . .and his influences, including the Italian Renaissance, particularly the art of Botticelli; Nietzsche’s theories of the artist as Übermensch, divinely endowed, divinely inspired; the monochromatic backgrounds of Van Gogh and Cézanne; the work of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi; and the primitive sculptures of Africa and Oceania with their simplified, masklike triangular faces, elongated silhouettes, puckered lips, low foreheads, and heads on exaggeratedly long necks.
We see the ways in which Modigliani’s long-kept-secret illness from tuberculosis (it almost killed him as a young man) affected his work and his attitude toward life ; how consumption caused him to embrace fatalism and idealism, creativity and death; and how he used alcohol and opium with laudanum as an antispasmodic to hide the symptoms of the disease and how, because of it, he came to be seen as a dissolute alcoholic.
And throughout, we see the Paris that Modigliani lived in, a city in dynamic flux where art was still a noble cause; how Modigliani became part of a life in the streets and a world of art and artists then in a transforming revolution; Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, et al.—and others more radical—Matisse, Derain, etc., all living within blocks of one another.
Secrest’s book, written with unprecedented access to letters, diaries, and photographs never before seen, is an extraordinary revelation of a life lived in art . . . Here is Modigliani, the man and the artist, seemingly shy, delicate, a man on a desperate mission, masquerading as an alcoholic, cheating death again and again, and calculating what he had to do in order to go on working and concealing his secret for however much time remained . . .
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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321 people want to read
About the author
Meryle Secrest
28 books33 followersMeryle Secrest was born and educated in Bath, England, and lives in Washington, DC. She is the author of twelve biographies and was awarded the 2006 Presidential National Humanities Medal.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
August 10, 2019
Sometimes the stars method of rating books doesn't quite make sense. As described by hovering the mouse, they are classifications that describe various levels of 'like'. Did, didn't, really did, did a lot. Sometimes that is the most important thing about a book, and we'd 'like' to think that if we approved, that the book must ergo be a good book. Sometimes though, verifiably good is more valuable than liked-- there are gaps between good and liked.
Modigliani, What I See
There is no significant light source in a Modigliani portrait. There are no beams or motes of dust caught in shafts from window or lamp or the heavens; this is not to say there is no light. Similarly, there is no significant meaning-- no overriding event or drama that shapes the content or execution, because it is nearly always the same content, and similar execution. Elegant line-drawings render well-massed re-imaginings of the human figure, generally relying on simplification, elongation, and some variation on the age-old beauty of the 'S' curve in their composition. Palette is amber-red and gold against green-grays and touches of delfty blues, and the tube of Umber must have always been squeezed out first.
Deceptively simple, and to be honest, never any real challenge to the Cezannes, Matisses or Picassos that were the front line of the School Of Paris of his day.
Not for Modi the wild reinvention of conception that Painting would undergo in these years; his subject was a tranquil, unsmiling, pared-down head-and-shoulder portrait, each and every one a sibling, another constant in his life's unvarying work. Male or female, a quiet sitter in an artist's studio, background just out of focus. Never would there be a Guernica, and Modi was a student of his contemporaries, as well as a big admirer of Picasso.
Rather, there is a taste and discretion that captures the small tensions and sometimes the turmoil of his subject; and there is the beautifully somber palette and graceful line that describe things that are innermost secrets, yet face the world every day.
There are small abstractions, the twists and gentle contortions of mass, the conscious allusion to masks, the reluctance to go too deeply into the eyes (sometimes abstracted to blank orbs). The anxiety in the hands, the rake of the shoulders, the turmoil in the glance remove the need for a storyline. There is the quiet moodiness in the illumination, contrasty and yet soft; there is the gentle palette of the surroundings, never featured but always a modifier. There is the Italianate sensuality of the forms and the line, rather than the furious French modernism of the day.
Modigliani's worst can sometimes seem like outdoor café-table caricaturing given the finearts razzle; there's no reason to dispute that, since quite often that was the beginning of one of his compositions. But his best, and most of it is his best, is single-mindedly sure, a purist vision of the human comedy --painted in the middle of a cyclone of the obstreperous modernism to be seen eating it's own tail for breakfast, daily, in Paris.
How The Book Sees It
I don't think author Seacrest would disagree very much with the way I see the work, and yet, as biographer, she has an agenda to keep, dragons to slay.
Amedeo Modigliani is often portrayed as one --a ringleader, even-- of the unstable, unwashed, absinthe-soaked madmen that terrorized Montmartre in the name of Art. Modern Art. Great serial-womanizing egotists leading lives of impropriety, scandal and worse. Ms Secrest wants to emphasize that as a lifelong tubercular, Modi had no choice but to kill the pain with drink and drugs, and thus his Legend is misleading. Fine; this is one of those distinctions that always surround a Maestro; was Mozart such a genius because he wrote under the gun in poverty, or because he could write under the gun... was Shakespeare influenced by others or was he not ... does it shift the work any? If it can't be established, is it not a wild goose chase? Once a controversy or inconsistency is mentioned, it's covered; but Secrest labors on.
There's no real need to deny any of the biographical facts, and certainly no real way to pin particulars of the artist's work on any given aspect. Don Modigliani may have been a grand old padrone with a huge family back in Livorno Italy if he hadn't had tuberculosis; he might have lived to the age of a hundred. But he didn't, his life was short, a supernova, the very grail of Paris School mad artist, and his paintings are exquisite.
Kenneth Wayne's Modigliani And The Artists Of Montparnasse structures itself that way, and still doesn't miss the point of the artist himself. I think it's the better way to approach things, since it ties together so much of the spirit of the place and time.
Secrest's book does fairly well by the Parisian underground it depicts; the lofts and lavoirs are the kind where you hang your bicycle from the ceiling, so the rats don't eat the tires. Still, it wants to downplay the absurdist modernist madman theme whenever possible, and if the paintings were the only evidence, she'd have a fair point; unfortunately, we know way too much about him and his world to call an entire subculture accidental. Her book is very well populated with family and descendants who wish the madman legend was not so. But. Modigliani was both genius and self-destructive madman, very likely willfully so in the face of the death sentence of tuberculosis. Unfortunate that there always has to be a new wrinkle to validate any new biography.
Modigliani, What I See
There is no significant light source in a Modigliani portrait. There are no beams or motes of dust caught in shafts from window or lamp or the heavens; this is not to say there is no light. Similarly, there is no significant meaning-- no overriding event or drama that shapes the content or execution, because it is nearly always the same content, and similar execution. Elegant line-drawings render well-massed re-imaginings of the human figure, generally relying on simplification, elongation, and some variation on the age-old beauty of the 'S' curve in their composition. Palette is amber-red and gold against green-grays and touches of delfty blues, and the tube of Umber must have always been squeezed out first.
Deceptively simple, and to be honest, never any real challenge to the Cezannes, Matisses or Picassos that were the front line of the School Of Paris of his day.
Not for Modi the wild reinvention of conception that Painting would undergo in these years; his subject was a tranquil, unsmiling, pared-down head-and-shoulder portrait, each and every one a sibling, another constant in his life's unvarying work. Male or female, a quiet sitter in an artist's studio, background just out of focus. Never would there be a Guernica, and Modi was a student of his contemporaries, as well as a big admirer of Picasso.
Rather, there is a taste and discretion that captures the small tensions and sometimes the turmoil of his subject; and there is the beautifully somber palette and graceful line that describe things that are innermost secrets, yet face the world every day.
There are small abstractions, the twists and gentle contortions of mass, the conscious allusion to masks, the reluctance to go too deeply into the eyes (sometimes abstracted to blank orbs). The anxiety in the hands, the rake of the shoulders, the turmoil in the glance remove the need for a storyline. There is the quiet moodiness in the illumination, contrasty and yet soft; there is the gentle palette of the surroundings, never featured but always a modifier. There is the Italianate sensuality of the forms and the line, rather than the furious French modernism of the day.
Modigliani's worst can sometimes seem like outdoor café-table caricaturing given the finearts razzle; there's no reason to dispute that, since quite often that was the beginning of one of his compositions. But his best, and most of it is his best, is single-mindedly sure, a purist vision of the human comedy --painted in the middle of a cyclone of the obstreperous modernism to be seen eating it's own tail for breakfast, daily, in Paris.
How The Book Sees It
I don't think author Seacrest would disagree very much with the way I see the work, and yet, as biographer, she has an agenda to keep, dragons to slay.
Amedeo Modigliani is often portrayed as one --a ringleader, even-- of the unstable, unwashed, absinthe-soaked madmen that terrorized Montmartre in the name of Art. Modern Art. Great serial-womanizing egotists leading lives of impropriety, scandal and worse. Ms Secrest wants to emphasize that as a lifelong tubercular, Modi had no choice but to kill the pain with drink and drugs, and thus his Legend is misleading. Fine; this is one of those distinctions that always surround a Maestro; was Mozart such a genius because he wrote under the gun in poverty, or because he could write under the gun... was Shakespeare influenced by others or was he not ... does it shift the work any? If it can't be established, is it not a wild goose chase? Once a controversy or inconsistency is mentioned, it's covered; but Secrest labors on.
There's no real need to deny any of the biographical facts, and certainly no real way to pin particulars of the artist's work on any given aspect. Don Modigliani may have been a grand old padrone with a huge family back in Livorno Italy if he hadn't had tuberculosis; he might have lived to the age of a hundred. But he didn't, his life was short, a supernova, the very grail of Paris School mad artist, and his paintings are exquisite.
Kenneth Wayne's Modigliani And The Artists Of Montparnasse structures itself that way, and still doesn't miss the point of the artist himself. I think it's the better way to approach things, since it ties together so much of the spirit of the place and time.
Secrest's book does fairly well by the Parisian underground it depicts; the lofts and lavoirs are the kind where you hang your bicycle from the ceiling, so the rats don't eat the tires. Still, it wants to downplay the absurdist modernist madman theme whenever possible, and if the paintings were the only evidence, she'd have a fair point; unfortunately, we know way too much about him and his world to call an entire subculture accidental. Her book is very well populated with family and descendants who wish the madman legend was not so. But. Modigliani was both genius and self-destructive madman, very likely willfully so in the face of the death sentence of tuberculosis. Unfortunate that there always has to be a new wrinkle to validate any new biography.
May 2, 2011
The Tragedy of Modigliani,
Meryle Sechrist has proven her merits as a biographer in her books on Frank Lloyd Wright, Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson and Leonard Bernstein and she has always shown a penchant for cleansing the facade of famous people and examining their lives in context with the times in which they lived and worked. In MODIGLIANI: A LIFE she has written a near novel about a fascinating artist whose works are deeply admired but whose personal reputation has been to date that of a inordinately handsome alcoholic, hashish addicted, imbiber of absinthe womanizer whose behavior when under the influence of his drugs of choice was that of a self destructive and cruel bohemian.
What Secrest brings to light in this book is how Modigliani's shame at having tuberculosis for most of his life, hiding that ominous fact by altering his mind with alcohol etc. partially explains his behavioral patterns. It may sound like a clinical soap opera story but in Secrest's learned and highly respected hands a new vision of the life of Modigliani surfaces, making way for a closer appreciation of his art. Though he died young (at age 35!) he left behind his trademark elongated necked portraits of women and men, his polished portraits of colleagues and interesting models, his highly sensually charged nudes on both canvas and paper, and his sculptures whose lines are still being imitated today by artists. Secrest shares his life as an Italian born Sephardic Jew from an impoverished family, his affairs with Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and the English journalist Beatrice Hastings and his preoccupation with psychic phenomena.
The book is accompanied by numerous photographs of the artist and his colleagues and acquaintances and reproductions of some of his works. It is a fine mix, the creative writing being enhance by the art instead of the usual 'byline' format many biographical works assume. This is no only the definitive book on the artist Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920), it is also as well written a historical novel as any on the shelves of books on artists.
Grady Harp
Meryle Sechrist has proven her merits as a biographer in her books on Frank Lloyd Wright, Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson and Leonard Bernstein and she has always shown a penchant for cleansing the facade of famous people and examining their lives in context with the times in which they lived and worked. In MODIGLIANI: A LIFE she has written a near novel about a fascinating artist whose works are deeply admired but whose personal reputation has been to date that of a inordinately handsome alcoholic, hashish addicted, imbiber of absinthe womanizer whose behavior when under the influence of his drugs of choice was that of a self destructive and cruel bohemian.
What Secrest brings to light in this book is how Modigliani's shame at having tuberculosis for most of his life, hiding that ominous fact by altering his mind with alcohol etc. partially explains his behavioral patterns. It may sound like a clinical soap opera story but in Secrest's learned and highly respected hands a new vision of the life of Modigliani surfaces, making way for a closer appreciation of his art. Though he died young (at age 35!) he left behind his trademark elongated necked portraits of women and men, his polished portraits of colleagues and interesting models, his highly sensually charged nudes on both canvas and paper, and his sculptures whose lines are still being imitated today by artists. Secrest shares his life as an Italian born Sephardic Jew from an impoverished family, his affairs with Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and the English journalist Beatrice Hastings and his preoccupation with psychic phenomena.
The book is accompanied by numerous photographs of the artist and his colleagues and acquaintances and reproductions of some of his works. It is a fine mix, the creative writing being enhance by the art instead of the usual 'byline' format many biographical works assume. This is no only the definitive book on the artist Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920), it is also as well written a historical novel as any on the shelves of books on artists.
Grady Harp
July 13, 2011
Sometimes you decide to read a book just because you don't know anything about the subject. That's the case with this one. I had read one biography by Meryle Secrest, of Richard Rodgers, and I liked it. But I had an interest in Rodgers to start with. In Modigliani's case, all I knew was that he did paintings of long-necked women with almond-shaped faces, and my attitude was pretty much that if you've seen one of those paintings, you've seen them all. So when the bound galley of this book showed up, I decided I'd check it out to see why Modigliani deserved a biography.
The premise of Secrest's biography is that he has been misrepresented as a self-destructive drunk who just happened to paint a lot of good pictures. She puts the blame for his erratic behavior and his alcoholism on tuberculosis, which because it was a disease that once had the stigma that AIDS more recently carried, was something he was made an effort to conceal. And that his drinking was really to keep him from coughing so much. I think she makes her point, though at the expense of reiterating it unnecessarily.
Oddly, it is not until the very end of the book that she comes to grips with Modigliani's stature as an artist, admitting that in academic and critical circles, his work is not always considered of the highest rank. It fetches high prices at Sotheby's and Christie's, and is generally popular, but the same could be said of Salvador Dalí, whose work lacks critical cachet these days. On the scale of great moderns, does Modigliani belong in the company of Picasso and Matisse, or in the company of Dalí? It's probably an unanswerable question, but to my mind, after reading Secrest's book and looking at a lot of Modigliani on the Web, I'd say that Modigliani was a great colorist with a superb skill for line and composition, but that on the other hand a lot of his portraiture verges on caricature. There is a hint of mannerism in his work that makes it tiresome after a while.
But Secrest's analysis of some of his paintings is persuasive, and if anything, has sent me back to look at his work with a keener eye -- no, if you've seen one Modigliani, you haven't seen them all.
The premise of Secrest's biography is that he has been misrepresented as a self-destructive drunk who just happened to paint a lot of good pictures. She puts the blame for his erratic behavior and his alcoholism on tuberculosis, which because it was a disease that once had the stigma that AIDS more recently carried, was something he was made an effort to conceal. And that his drinking was really to keep him from coughing so much. I think she makes her point, though at the expense of reiterating it unnecessarily.
Oddly, it is not until the very end of the book that she comes to grips with Modigliani's stature as an artist, admitting that in academic and critical circles, his work is not always considered of the highest rank. It fetches high prices at Sotheby's and Christie's, and is generally popular, but the same could be said of Salvador Dalí, whose work lacks critical cachet these days. On the scale of great moderns, does Modigliani belong in the company of Picasso and Matisse, or in the company of Dalí? It's probably an unanswerable question, but to my mind, after reading Secrest's book and looking at a lot of Modigliani on the Web, I'd say that Modigliani was a great colorist with a superb skill for line and composition, but that on the other hand a lot of his portraiture verges on caricature. There is a hint of mannerism in his work that makes it tiresome after a while.
But Secrest's analysis of some of his paintings is persuasive, and if anything, has sent me back to look at his work with a keener eye -- no, if you've seen one Modigliani, you haven't seen them all.
December 31, 2011
I found this book very well-written, and the subject fascinating. It was carefully researched and thoughtfully presented. I came to it initially after seeing a rather bad movie on the artist, which piqued my curiosity, mainly because nothing and no-one can make Modigliani boring. I was also taken with Jeanne Hebuterne, his last mistress, who died at 22, and wanted to learn more about her. I intend to do more research on her, but this book did fill in many gaps.
Secrest's main thesis seems to be that Modigliani was not the debauched, selfish libertine he has been portrayed as being. However, although I believe his tuberculosis may well have been behind his use of drugs and alcohol, as well as affecting his brain, I have trouble forgiving a man who knew he had a highly infectious and deadly disease, chose to mask it, and run the risk of infecting others with absolutely no compunction.
This is no reflection on Secrest; in fact, it is to her credit that she does not try to gloss over her subject's faults and failings, presenting us with a richly nuanced and detailed portrait of a complex artist. Modigliani, after all, is fascinating partly because of his mix of exceptionally good and appallingly bad character traits. I also enjoyed the picture Secrest painted of Bohemian Paris, very detailed and atmospheric.
Secrest's main thesis seems to be that Modigliani was not the debauched, selfish libertine he has been portrayed as being. However, although I believe his tuberculosis may well have been behind his use of drugs and alcohol, as well as affecting his brain, I have trouble forgiving a man who knew he had a highly infectious and deadly disease, chose to mask it, and run the risk of infecting others with absolutely no compunction.
This is no reflection on Secrest; in fact, it is to her credit that she does not try to gloss over her subject's faults and failings, presenting us with a richly nuanced and detailed portrait of a complex artist. Modigliani, after all, is fascinating partly because of his mix of exceptionally good and appallingly bad character traits. I also enjoyed the picture Secrest painted of Bohemian Paris, very detailed and atmospheric.
August 8, 2022
Who? Oh, right, the guy who painted what I've always thought of as "giraffe-necked people." Didn't he do some sculpture too? Vaguely African mask-ish?
Modigliani. Sometimes I pick up a book just because I don't know anything at all about the subject. As it turns out, I thought I knew nothing about Modigliani, but actually knew next to nothing. I do remember the nude that auctioned for a crazy amount of money and Head of a Woman has been copied for every trendy home furnishing store in existence. I also knew he was a drug addict and drunk, but wasn't every artist hanging out in early 20th century Paris an addict?
His art confounds me. Or, rather, the popularity of his art confounds me. It's all nearly the same: flat, semi-geometric, nearly cartoony head-and-shoulder portraits, all with the same exaggerated, slightly off-kilter almond eyes and freakishly serpentine long necks. In the few paintings were hands are seen, they look like lobster claws more than functioning metacarpals. Is his art "good"? I have no idea. It is a bit hypnotic to look at more than a few of them at a time. The art is...interesting? I really don't know. Are these heads something I'd want to look at every day? Probably not. But then I think maybe they are the sort of paintings you don't pay attention to after a while. Like the mass-produced modern art made from hospitals or corporate offices that lends color, but five minutes after someone leaves the premises, they couldn't tell you want it looked like or even remember it was there. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe they are more interesting when seen IRL instead of reprinted on a website. (There are no images of the art in the book...at least not the Kindle edition.)
With this book, Secrest seems to be on a mission to salvage Modigliani's reputation. She can't refute the fact that Modigliani was an addict and alcoholic, but she seems eager to provide a justification for it. Had the fact that he had TB become public, he would have been shunned, so he drank and did hashish to hide his (other) health issues. What's implied is that we should excuse his behavior, for it was in the cause of great art and his deep need for companionship.
Sorry, not buying it. He knowingly and purposely exposed people -- a LOT of people - to a highly contagious and deadly disease. Whether his frequent and flagrant use of drugs and booze were cover or coping mechanism, that doesn't change the fact that he knew he was contagious and apparently didn't give a rat's ass. Let's keep carousing in public areas and seducing every young girl within reach, TB be damned. (Let's add pedophile to the list of his character flaws because impregnating the 14 year old maid was bad form even in the early 1900's.)
Secrest has written quite a few artist biographies, so it was surprising to me how disjointed and rambling this bio was. There is such a thing as too many details about peripheral people and events. The author puts a lot of thoughts in Modigliani's head without it being clear how she reached those conclusions. While it's common for biographer's to play "what if" and "let's imagine" to explore their subject, it needs to have some foundation in documented fact rather than just feel like wishful thinking.
In all, I liked the book well enough. It’s better than “OK” but not quite “I liked.” We're going three stars here because GR won't allow half stars, and the descriptions of the art scene in Paris and the epilogue about the life of the orphaned daughter were interesting.
While the book didn't help me understand the appeal of his art or why Modigliani is one of the most forged artists who ever lived, it's clear why there have been movies made about his life. People love to be voyeur's to someone else's train wreck life, and you can't get much more train wreck tragic than a consumptive artist always in the shadows, a dysfunctional illicit affair, a horrific death, and an even more horrific suicide.
Modigliani. Sometimes I pick up a book just because I don't know anything at all about the subject. As it turns out, I thought I knew nothing about Modigliani, but actually knew next to nothing. I do remember the nude that auctioned for a crazy amount of money and Head of a Woman has been copied for every trendy home furnishing store in existence. I also knew he was a drug addict and drunk, but wasn't every artist hanging out in early 20th century Paris an addict?
His art confounds me. Or, rather, the popularity of his art confounds me. It's all nearly the same: flat, semi-geometric, nearly cartoony head-and-shoulder portraits, all with the same exaggerated, slightly off-kilter almond eyes and freakishly serpentine long necks. In the few paintings were hands are seen, they look like lobster claws more than functioning metacarpals. Is his art "good"? I have no idea. It is a bit hypnotic to look at more than a few of them at a time. The art is...interesting? I really don't know. Are these heads something I'd want to look at every day? Probably not. But then I think maybe they are the sort of paintings you don't pay attention to after a while. Like the mass-produced modern art made from hospitals or corporate offices that lends color, but five minutes after someone leaves the premises, they couldn't tell you want it looked like or even remember it was there. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe they are more interesting when seen IRL instead of reprinted on a website. (There are no images of the art in the book...at least not the Kindle edition.)
With this book, Secrest seems to be on a mission to salvage Modigliani's reputation. She can't refute the fact that Modigliani was an addict and alcoholic, but she seems eager to provide a justification for it. Had the fact that he had TB become public, he would have been shunned, so he drank and did hashish to hide his (other) health issues. What's implied is that we should excuse his behavior, for it was in the cause of great art and his deep need for companionship.
Sorry, not buying it. He knowingly and purposely exposed people -- a LOT of people - to a highly contagious and deadly disease. Whether his frequent and flagrant use of drugs and booze were cover or coping mechanism, that doesn't change the fact that he knew he was contagious and apparently didn't give a rat's ass. Let's keep carousing in public areas and seducing every young girl within reach, TB be damned. (Let's add pedophile to the list of his character flaws because impregnating the 14 year old maid was bad form even in the early 1900's.)
Secrest has written quite a few artist biographies, so it was surprising to me how disjointed and rambling this bio was. There is such a thing as too many details about peripheral people and events. The author puts a lot of thoughts in Modigliani's head without it being clear how she reached those conclusions. While it's common for biographer's to play "what if" and "let's imagine" to explore their subject, it needs to have some foundation in documented fact rather than just feel like wishful thinking.
In all, I liked the book well enough. It’s better than “OK” but not quite “I liked.” We're going three stars here because GR won't allow half stars, and the descriptions of the art scene in Paris and the epilogue about the life of the orphaned daughter were interesting.
While the book didn't help me understand the appeal of his art or why Modigliani is one of the most forged artists who ever lived, it's clear why there have been movies made about his life. People love to be voyeur's to someone else's train wreck life, and you can't get much more train wreck tragic than a consumptive artist always in the shadows, a dysfunctional illicit affair, a horrific death, and an even more horrific suicide.
June 9, 2015
"What seemed superficial was in fact full of nuance." (p.5)
"Unmarried, they shuttled from house to house, feeling stifled, unappreciated, and blocked, taking refuge in a kind of neurasthenia common to intelligent women who have caught a glimpse of a wider world and then been barred from entering it." (p.39)
"…in the nineteenth century, calling a woman insane was often a convenient way of getting rid of her. A sense of frustration was seen as a perverse refusal to be happy, arguing with a husband a sacrilege, and rebelling against her natural roles as dangerous." (p.45)
"A group of artists had rejected the stale formulae of the academics and were dedicated to an art that would mirror the reality they saw around them." (p.53)
"This is what geniuses are like- childish, rather silly, self-centred and impossible to put up with." (p.58)
"There is considerable evidence that the experience of almost dying can have a life-altering, if not transfiguring effect." (p.68)
"I am a reflection of other people’s lives." (p.81)
"He trusted any stranger we might introduce to him, and was completely open, with no pretences, inhibitions or reserve." (p.113)
"He already had a deep-rooted confidence in his own worth. He knew that he was an innovator rather than a follower, but he had not as yet received a single commission." (p.114)
"In a former age artists might never be rich, but they could count upon the patronage of the church or the aristocracy and were honored and valued. Now art had become a commodity, to be sold for whatever the market could bear, and the artist a sort of tradesman with no special claim to respect or status." (p.119)
"Each evening, candles fixed to each stone head would transform a squalid studio into a sacred space. One imagines him seated there in the darkness, safe in the magical circle of his imaginary temple." (p.143)
"Carco thought, in common with Baudelaire, that the only escape from the eventual annihilation of the spirit that Bohemia represented was the discipline of work." (p.152)
"…great artists seldom take any interest in the events of the outside world. They are occupied in realising their own images and achieving formal necessities." (p.202)
"And he grandly threw out, or threw away, pearls of his imagination as if they were small change." (p.233)
"“Happiness is an angel with a grave face.” No one who had endured what he had, and survived, could possibly think otherwise." (p.237)
"His was the dilemma common to every artist, i.e., how to be true to his inner vision and at the same time reconcile himself with what the market wanted to buy, or was ready for at that moment." (p.266)
"Great artists like these go to the end of themselves, and the beauty of their work is a reflection of themselves, after all. They are courageous, to the edge of death." (p.299)
"Unmarried, they shuttled from house to house, feeling stifled, unappreciated, and blocked, taking refuge in a kind of neurasthenia common to intelligent women who have caught a glimpse of a wider world and then been barred from entering it." (p.39)
"…in the nineteenth century, calling a woman insane was often a convenient way of getting rid of her. A sense of frustration was seen as a perverse refusal to be happy, arguing with a husband a sacrilege, and rebelling against her natural roles as dangerous." (p.45)
"A group of artists had rejected the stale formulae of the academics and were dedicated to an art that would mirror the reality they saw around them." (p.53)
"This is what geniuses are like- childish, rather silly, self-centred and impossible to put up with." (p.58)
"There is considerable evidence that the experience of almost dying can have a life-altering, if not transfiguring effect." (p.68)
"I am a reflection of other people’s lives." (p.81)
"He trusted any stranger we might introduce to him, and was completely open, with no pretences, inhibitions or reserve." (p.113)
"He already had a deep-rooted confidence in his own worth. He knew that he was an innovator rather than a follower, but he had not as yet received a single commission." (p.114)
"In a former age artists might never be rich, but they could count upon the patronage of the church or the aristocracy and were honored and valued. Now art had become a commodity, to be sold for whatever the market could bear, and the artist a sort of tradesman with no special claim to respect or status." (p.119)
"Each evening, candles fixed to each stone head would transform a squalid studio into a sacred space. One imagines him seated there in the darkness, safe in the magical circle of his imaginary temple." (p.143)
"Carco thought, in common with Baudelaire, that the only escape from the eventual annihilation of the spirit that Bohemia represented was the discipline of work." (p.152)
"…great artists seldom take any interest in the events of the outside world. They are occupied in realising their own images and achieving formal necessities." (p.202)
"And he grandly threw out, or threw away, pearls of his imagination as if they were small change." (p.233)
"“Happiness is an angel with a grave face.” No one who had endured what he had, and survived, could possibly think otherwise." (p.237)
"His was the dilemma common to every artist, i.e., how to be true to his inner vision and at the same time reconcile himself with what the market wanted to buy, or was ready for at that moment." (p.266)
"Great artists like these go to the end of themselves, and the beauty of their work is a reflection of themselves, after all. They are courageous, to the edge of death." (p.299)
November 4, 2010
A good insight into Modigliani's miserable life. Crummy childhood beset by Pleurisy, Scarlet Fever, Cholera and TB. Then he lives the bohemian life in Paris finding his simple line, but mostly drinking to hide his consumption. TB is highly contagious and people were very paranoid about anyone with a bad cough. The author has written 10 biographies so she knows what she's doing, but she gives us more details than you'd ever care to know. Her task, to debunk the many myths about Modigliani's drinking and drugs, is all the more difficult when there are so many "friends" who spread the myths. She also was denied any help or documents from Modigliani's common law wife and mother of their child, Jeanne. Not a great book, unless you're into early 20th century artists.
December 21, 2012
Lots of interesting facts, but also way more facts than I needed to know about his relatives. Cool to read about all the artists he spent time with in Paris
February 4, 2025
Rating: 2,5. Com alguma informação "interessante" mas estruturalmente muito deficiente. É claramente o trabalho de uma "biógrafa profissional" que tanto pode escrever sobre um pintor como sobre um jogador de futebol. Assim sendo é normal que os factos "interessantes", as curiosidades e as anedotas sobre a vida de Modigliani ganhem particular relevância em detrimento da análise critica da sua obra. Obra essa particularmente ausente, aliás, em termos de reproduções fotográficas, o que é supinamente irritante já que a A., embora como disse não se aventure em exegeses, não deixa de referir os trabalhos que M. foi fazendo ao longo da sua (curta) vida. Irritantes também os sucessivos "enchidos" que a Autora à falta de melhor vai servindo ao leitor certamente para colmatar as lacunas de que o seu texto padece: derivações biográficas sobre terceiros, rumores absurdos, polémicas bafientas e muita bisbilhotice.
August 9, 2020
The whole text has no structure. The author never gets around to substantiate her thesis, that tuberculosis was the main factor of Modigliani‘s career. She seems not know how to construct an argument and how to reconstruct historical contexts and place her hero there. Her grasp of historical differences between a situation in 1870 and 1910 is very weak. She‘s fond of fantasising about what „the noble genius“ might have thought and felt at any given moment in his life. Timeline is repeatedly completely muddled, she has no sense for socio-economic structures of the art scene in Paris at all. It‘s astonishing that someone that has written so many biographies is so bad at doing it like in this „masterpiece“.
September 21, 2020
This was a thoughtful, sensitively balanced exploration of the life of Amedeo Modigliani. While obvious that Secrest is an admirer of the artist and his work, the book never descends into idle hero worship or fan over-praising. Above all, I most appreciated Secrest’s bravery in tackling the myths about Modigliani’s reputation as a drunkard and drug addict. The more troubling truth about his lifetime of illness and his constant struggle to self medicate in order to quell his suffering enough to work, while less dramatic, is a more sobering and important truth to know about Modigliani and offers more insight into the genius behind his work.
March 19, 2020
I’ve been fascinated with Modigliani ever since I chose a painting by him randomly at a watercolor class I was taking. The assignment was to create a watercolor of one of his paintings and I chose one of Jeanne. I hadn’t heard of Modigliani before this class and became curious about his life and work. This book gives a fabulous view into what life was like in Paris when Modigliani was living and working there. Being somewhat of a Francophile as well as a Modigliani fan made this a book I couldn’t put down!
September 9, 2020
eh...decent but not great. not a lot of confirmed sources but a lot of theorizing about what he may/may not have done and who he may/may not have been and why he abused drugs and alcohol. i love his art but it sounds to me as if he was an addict/alcoholic with tb. sad story, actually. not a great read. ugly ending with a tack-on last chapter prior to the epilogue talking a bit too much about his alleged children/child, his last partner and unborn child's end and the modigliani forgery industry. truly depressing...and i have a high tolerance for depressing stories.
July 21, 2025
One of the most intriguing and interesting biographies I have ever read. This was a hard-to-put-down page-turner! Impeccable research and scholarship reveals an enigmatic and fascinating artist. Secrest has really done us all a great favour in her inimitable quest to get to the bottom of the Modigliani myth and find the man hidden within it ... and also the tragic story of his final partner
September 29, 2022
Had to read this for a class and for my job. It's mostly dramatization, and tends to be a bit opinionated so if you're looking for facts and actual accounts you'll have to dig through but it was still a really interesting read
September 17, 2020
For some reason the authors managed to make Modigliani's life boring at least for me. Perhaps there is a story in to be told but I just found it tedious.
December 25, 2020
A terrific insight into the life a a much misunderstood artist.
November 14, 2021
I wish the author didn’t put detailed description of so many of Modigliani’s contemporaries. It was a bit confusing, hence the four stars.
August 9, 2015
Modigliani: A Life was scrupulously researched by its author Meryle Secrest, who clearly was passionate about the subject. I found her book a fascinating account of the artists life. He was filled with contradictions and wracked by recurring illness - tuberculosis - which he self-medicated with alcohol and various drugs. Meryle Secrest's most interesting insight, in my opinion, was the way in which Modigliani's need to keep his illness secret - to wear a mask - informed and influenced his art. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, tuberculosis, was a shameful scourge, which caused people to be shunned for fear of contagion. Tuberculosis was a wasting disease without a true medical cure. Women who suffered its effects, such as those immortalized by Pre-Raphaelite painters, were considered fashionably beautiful - willowy ultra-thin bodies, elongated necks, pale complexions, wan expressions, shining eyes.
It seemed that, for the most part, Modigliani lived to sculpt and paint. Art was his life. All else was either pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, distraction or inspiration but creating art was at the center of his being. He was true to himself in this essential way - although he wore a mask to hide much of who he was from the world.
It seemed that, for the most part, Modigliani lived to sculpt and paint. Art was his life. All else was either pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, distraction or inspiration but creating art was at the center of his being. He was true to himself in this essential way - although he wore a mask to hide much of who he was from the world.
April 7, 2011
I am sure that Meryle Secrest's goal was not to get me thinking more about how public health has changed over the last century than Amedeo Modigliani. However, that's what happened. I have always been appreciative if not wild about Modi's elongated portraits, and that has not changed. Despite Secrest's best efforts, I see him as no more than a Very Good Artist. While he hung with Picasso, he is more in Moise Kisling's cohort (Who is Moise Kisling? Exactly).
What this book did do was make me realize that, the necessity of health insurance reform aside, as far as public health goes, we are very lucky. Modi suffered from tuberculosis, among other things, and when I say suffered, I mean it. It was a disease that, in improperly heated homes and on poor diets, would ravage and wither a body. Because its origins were not understood, those who had it were often shunned or displaced. Let's hope that only a lack of talent keeps would-be artists from succeeding in the future.
What this book did do was make me realize that, the necessity of health insurance reform aside, as far as public health goes, we are very lucky. Modi suffered from tuberculosis, among other things, and when I say suffered, I mean it. It was a disease that, in improperly heated homes and on poor diets, would ravage and wither a body. Because its origins were not understood, those who had it were often shunned or displaced. Let's hope that only a lack of talent keeps would-be artists from succeeding in the future.
June 1, 2015
I enjoyed reading this, my first biography of Modigliani. His life is fascinating and it was a great book to encounter his art on a deeper level. And to its credit, the book was enjoyable to read and went fairly quickly (that is, after making it through the "early days" which generally aren't that exciting for anybody).
Having said that, Secrest is a professional biographer and I felt like much of the book was a distillation of things that she had learned through the years by writing the lives of Frank Lloyd Wright, art critic Kenneth Clark, and others. At times, the story veered from Modigliani's life. In addition, for good and bad, the author works hard to correct the historical record that Modigliani was a drunken soot. At times, it reads like an activist piece in that she works really hard to defend his behavior.
Overall, I enjoyed the book a lot though I kept thinking that there must be a better Modigliani biography, either out there, or to be written in the future.
Having said that, Secrest is a professional biographer and I felt like much of the book was a distillation of things that she had learned through the years by writing the lives of Frank Lloyd Wright, art critic Kenneth Clark, and others. At times, the story veered from Modigliani's life. In addition, for good and bad, the author works hard to correct the historical record that Modigliani was a drunken soot. At times, it reads like an activist piece in that she works really hard to defend his behavior.
Overall, I enjoyed the book a lot though I kept thinking that there must be a better Modigliani biography, either out there, or to be written in the future.
June 20, 2014
a concise biography on Modigliani, and one that tries to dispell the myth with more factual informaiton. the problem that i have with this bio is that there is still little known about Modigliani on his own without this biography become more a biography about the people who KNEW modigliani. i still found it a noble try on Secrest's part to dispell the myth of Modi as a boozer by delving further into his lifelong battle with tuberculosis. that said, if a man is downing drinks all day to battle a disease....he's still a drunk.
April 28, 2011
I haven't finished reading this latest biography of Modigliani and does not yet feel definitive. The only biography that IS definitive is Modigliani's work, his paintings, sculpture, and other art. In comparison to Manning Marable's biography of Malcolm X, this is a slow, paceful, thoughtful exposition of another artist who died way before his time. Like Malcolm X, Modigliani's short life keeps us wondering: what if he had lived to a ripe old age, a la Picasso?
January 22, 2013
We can talk about Van Gogh's ear (or lackthereof) or Turner's lilies or even Turner's sunsets but Modigliani's elongated portraits can be quite ephemeral. This bio opens up a little window (and corrects a lot of misconceptions) into his life and gives one more insight into another misunderstood artist.
August 20, 2011
strange book club selection... I couldn't finish it.
Want to read
September 6, 2013I got this mad cheap on the sale rack, 's why I'ma read it maybe. But really what do I care about Modigliani's life, is what I'm asking myself.
March 14, 2015
Surprisingly thin bio of the artist who would die at 36.
July 1, 2011
A re-evaluation of Modigliani's life in light of his lifelong suffering from tuberculosis.
Read
September 26, 2017a wonderful biography. easy to read despite being chuck full of information. There is no end to the fascination with the lives of artists, especially in this time period that included the ravages of tuberculosis and other now treatable diseases. I was amused by the author's using of quotes from her own books in the text.
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