Last night, I pulled one of my books about Modigliani off my shelf to read before bed. My collection of art books is small (but hearty), yet somehow I managed to end up with two Modigliani books. Anyway, when I sat down to do my daily draw this morning, it was natural that I’d add this to the mix.
My commitment this year is to be more disciplined in my art practice by drawing or making something every day. Spending so much time with my work helps me see more clearly how ideas that go into my head come out again.
Modigliani, is known as the last Bohemian in Paris. Born in 1884, he died in 1920 at the young age of 35. He’s a textbook example of a made for the movies sort of artist. He’s said to have had a revelatory experience while seriously sick as a child, which lead him to go to art school. He floated around Italy for a while, before landing in Paris. He was born to a wealthy family, but chose to live a life of struggling poverty as an artist. Charismatic and charming, he was respected by other artists. However, he failed to grab much attention from buyers and was unwilling to compromise his work for success. By the end of his life, he was a penniless alcoholic, but it was tuberculosis that killed him. To cap it all off, his fiancé, Jeanne Hébuterne committed suicide, killing herself and her unborn second child. It’s a tragedy that seems born for myth making. And later, someone did make a movie about him.
But, what drew me to him are his paintings. Lean and statuesque, they echo African masks and sculptures that were a feature of the Parisian scene at the time. People like Matisse and Picasso were similarly influenced, though in different ways. African masks and sculptures are heavily abstracted. Their weird geometries must have have seemed bizarrely foreign. This would be especially true, if you cut your teeth studying the Venetian masters, as Modigliani had. Colonialism, for good or ill, brought back these sorts of influences and changed European art in the 20th century. But, the way in which African art was mined for disrupting ideas, while also stripping those influences of their original cultural contexts, is not something we should just let fly.
Masking, in particular, fascinates me, and I’ve done a fair amount of research into the subject. It’s a global and ancient tradition, that is still evolving today. This true as much in the Global North as anywhere. Consider, for instance, the evocative power of the Darth Vader helmet or the rise of V for Vendetta’s Guy Fawkes mask. These are powerful cultural markers. Masking everywhere produces art that is beautiful, weird (to me), profoundly rich in meaning, and reflective of something innate in humanity.
But, it’s not there just for the taking. It’s precisely the history of appropriation, which Modigliani was apart of, that pushes me to really consider the line between appropriation and appreciation. I try, at least. It’s complicated and something that takes an ongoing commitment in your art practice.