A Modigliani exhibition offers every museum an enormous visitor potential. But also an enormous number of traps. After all, the police have not yet moved to Vienna’s Albertina. It was in 2017 at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa when investigators confiscated a third of the 60 works on display because they were forgeries; Amedeo Modigliani is a favorite of counterfeiters because of its high recognition value. He is – his nudes are in third and fourth place of the highest-priced paintings at $ 170 and 157 million respectively – also one of the most expensive.
A dramatic action like back then is not to be expected in Vienna. For its show, which is brilliant in terms of time and style, the museum has secured the man as curator who played a key role in exposing the forgeries and the premature closure of the exhibition: the controversial French expert Marc Restellini.
But he would not have been available for a purely retrospective, stresses Restellini. But very much for turning his mission, which has now been pursued for 20 years, into an exhibition: to detach Modigliani from his image as a pleasing luxury kitschist and to anchor it in art history as a genius on par with Picasso. To put it straight away: he does not succeed in this with 120 paintings, 52 of which by Modigliani, richly furnished. Picasso was so much more diverse, innovative and daring in the course of his long career.
Did Modigliani dissuade Picasso from cubism and inspire him to “primitivism?”
The short life of Modigliani, however, who died impoverished of tuberculosis at the age of only 35 in 1920, crossed with Picasso’s at an art-historical point. Their acquaintance, the quality of which is unknown, could even have played a key role in dissuading Picasso from Cubism and adopting a new path: “primitivism”. There it is, this word in quotation marks in the subtitle of the Albertina show – “Revolution of Primitivism” – but not.
Modigliani was enthusiastic about non-European, especially African art and incorporated its archaic forms into his works, such as this head, which was created in 1911/1912.
(Photo: Bridgeman Images)
What is meant is the art that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century from the enthusiasm of some avant-gardists such as Picasso, Derain, Brancusi and Modigliani for non-European, especially African art. Albertina director Klaus Albrecht Schröder tried to calm down some indignant voices using the word as an established art-historical term as well as using epochs such as Impressionism or Fauvism without quotation marks, which also originate from an originally negative description. Not logically in itself, after all, not only the Parisian artists who “enjoyed” the colonial booty were dubbed “primitivists”, but also those who were exploited in this way.
The discussion does not go very far, but the quotation marks would still have done no harm. You would also have given the definition of terms more weight right at the beginning of the show. From the beginning, however, the intense staging also reveals the fascination that Modigliani, Picasso and a few others began to dominate from 1906: the fascination for the objects that they found in the collections of the Louvre and in the ethnographic museum in Paris began to discover. In the clear, strong, archaic forms they believed they had found a magic of the origins of art and a way out of academicism.
He paints mask-like faces, empty eyes – an astonishing consequence
Picasso painted his “Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907). After his arrival in Paris from 1906 to 1914, Modigliani chiseled stylized, rigid, beautiful women’s heads out of sand-lime brick; he saw himself primarily as a sculptor. Only when his already weak health continued to decline did he begin to paint – countless portraits of women and nudes, always looking for a timeless and universal beauty that encompasses centuries and cultures. To this thoroughly spiritual project – he originally thought of his sculptures as temple figures – he sacrificed the liveliness of his pictures. The limbs are elongated in a mannerist manner, the faces remain mask-like, the eyes empty, almost blind. And that in countless variations, an impressive and alienating consequence.
How exactly he stuck to his Asian, Egyptian, Indian, ancient and African models is made clear by means of a few direct comparisons, for example with the most delicate Cycladic island idols made of marble, dating from 2800 BC. From the Louvre or reliquary heads of the Central African Fang. This very carefully put together with objects that Modigliani must have known is what makes this exhibition so attractive, which shows the usual biographical drama about his early death, his poverty and the cruel fate of his pregnant lover, the painter Jeanne Hébuterne, which lasted a few days chose hers after his death, fades into the background.
Modigliani in his studio, 1915.
(Photo: Paul Guillaume)
Before that one can try to follow Restellini, for whom Modigliani and Picasso are the most important artists of the 20th century and who – comparable to Michelangelo and Leonardo – stages them as a couple: Modigliani as the intellectual, Picasso as the intuitive. Modigliani inscribed the “savoir”, i.e. the ability, the knowledge directly into his colleague – right next to his head, which he painted in 1914/15. For the first time in around 50 years, this one of two portraits for which Picasso sat as his model can be seen again in the Albertina. Modigliani was probably the only one to whom Picasso granted this honor and this patience. Because Modigliani was known for taking a long time for his portraits.
Perseverance seems to pay off at Modigliani: Due to the pandemic-related one-year postponement of the exhibition, which was planned for Modigliani’s 100th year of death in 2020, he even received a few more previously unavailable loans, according to Restellini. The Catalog Raisonné, on which he has been working for 26 years, is due to finally appear in 2022. It should include 80 works more than the previous standard work by Ambrogio Ceroni. Guaranteed no forgeries, says Restellini, who has set up his own laboratory in his private institute for research. Modigliani, he says, makes people dream. Or drive them crazy. Maybe sometimes both.
Modigliani. Revolution of primitivism. Vienna, Albertina. Until January 9th. The catalog costs 39.90 euros.