Modigliani: Parisian street artist extraordinaire

 Amedeo Modigliani arrived in Paris in the fall of 1906. Ambitious, handsome, and charismatic, the twenty-two year old avoided the more expensive yet prestigious neighborhoods like the Latin Quarter, and settled in Montmartre. In the early 1900s, this neighborhood was outside city limits and free of city taxes. Its open wastelands and numerous small vineyards, some of which still exist, were filled with inexpensive eateries and cabarets such as the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir, and Le Lapin Agile. The village’s shacks, rundown wooden homes, and makeshift gardens were left largely untouched by Baron Haussmann’s ambitious plans for the city’s urbanization and reconstruction.
     Downtown Paris had maintained its fin de siècle splendor and was hailed as a jewel of modern Europe. The Eiffel Tower was the capital’s emblem. In its shadow, almost three million inhabitants roamed through one thousand kilometers of small streets, alleys, and boulevards lined with ten thousand lampposts, half a million electric lights and dozens of art nouveau subway entrances. With an increasing number of foreign artists, writers, and intellectuals streaming into a city already famous for its history and physical beauty, Paris was the cultural center of the western world.
     Modigliani was a veritable street artist of his times. He sketched constantly, but he also drank absinthe. With an alcohol content as high as ninety percent, this sweet, tasting emerald green liquor known as la fée verte (the green fairy), was popular since the 1870s. Absinthe’s bitter, licorice-like taste and reported effects of euphoria without drunkenness were caused by mixing wormwood, a plant used for medicinal purposes since 3000 B.C., with alcohol. The young Italian bourgeois painter soon became a rebellious bohemian who could be seen staggering drunkenly from place to place with Montmartre native and fellow artist, Maurice Utrillo. He bartered sketches for a glass of wine or a meal. He gave drawings to friends and acquaintances who did not keep them, traded paintings for rent, and had a tendency, unless restrained, to remove his clothes when drunk.
  Growing up in the coastal town of Livorno, Modigliani had suffered from Tuberculosis and Typhoid, which almost killed him on several occasions. Each time, his mother Eugenia nurtured him back to health, at the same time grooming his talent for painting. She took him to Italy’s greatest museums so he could study and copy classic works from well known Renaissance, Florentine and Neopolitan painters. While symptoms of tuberculosis continued to plague the young man, he restlessly engaged in spiritualism, philosophy, and literature, but painted vigorously. Virtually no work exists from those very early years. The truth is, Modigliani really wanted to be a sculptor, and painted only for a lack of something better to do.
     Amedeo rented a shed built of tile and wood on the corner of Rue Lepic, adjacent to a dilapidated building at 13 Rue Ravignan called The Bateau-Lavoir, a haven for soon-to-be famous artists who met for meals, drinks, and intellectual banter. It is unclear whether Modigliani’s increasing consumption of alcohol, drugs, and women was the result of his exploratory nature, a need to investigate sources for artistic inspiration, or to ward off his inner demons.
     Perhaps it was the stress of poverty, or disappointment with his life that led him into a downward spiral; perhaps he was feeling alone, disenfranchised, or depressed. One day, the painter Henri Doucet brought Modigliani to 7, Rue du Delta, a house rented by Dr. Paul Alexandre, a 26 year old well-to-do dermatologist who was an art enthusiast as well as a generous friend and patron. The house soon became a meeting place for gatherings; drug-filled evenings of performance, art, and conversation. The good doctor became an avid collector of Modigliani’s work, amassing more than 400 drawings, 25 paintings and several stone sculptures during the next six years.
     By 1915, Paris was a city in the midst of World War I. There were curfews and rationing. Many cafés were closed. There were few art shows, but Modigliani accelerated his production and sketched constantly. According to legend, he was exempted from military service because of poor health. He was drinking abundantly and had a tumultuous two year relationship with a British poetess and writer named Beatrice Hastings, who became a preferred model with whom he would socialize in the cafés of the Boulevard Raspail,
    The next year, Modigliani’s stature as a visual artist was confirmed when his paintings were shown alongside those of other greats of the contemporary art scene in what may have been the most important art exhibition of the time; The Salon d’Antin’s L’Art Moderne en France. Here, Picasso exhibited his famous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. 
     By this time, Amedeo had perfected his technique, especially for portraits and nudes that would become so “obviously Modigliani” to art enthusiasts in the years to come. Looking at a Modigliani, our gaze is drawn to the subject’s face, where resides an air of melancholy or contemplation; Some are distinguished by their angularity; others, by the repetition of a dominant geometric shape. Flowing curves form arms and torsos, intermixed with prominent lines that create an almost chiseled appearance unless we are led to areas governed by softer, more harmonious contours. The eyes are almost always asymmetrical. They might be dark, closed or covered in black cross-hatchings. Othertimes, they are painted a soft, light blue-gray. “With one eye you look out at the world,” Modigliani said by way of an explanation, “with the other you look in at yourself.”
      Amedeo soon discovered another true love, a nineteen-year old girl named Jeanne Hébuterne, nicknamed coconut because of her pale complexion and reddish brown hair. She studied at the Académie Colarossi, where Modigliani often went to practice life drawings. Despite becoming a father, Modigliani continued to drink, and his health took another turn for the worse. He and Jeanne lived in great poverty, but the now thirty-five year old artist was still painting. He lost most if not all of his teeth, and began coughing up blood; a sure sign of evolving tuberculosis and impending death. Jeanne lived with Modigliani in his small, two room apartment at 8 rue de la Grande Chaumière, next door to the art academy and very close to the corner of Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse at what is today named the Pablo Picasso intersection. They could walk to the Jardin du Luxembourg, where Modigliani had often shared a bench with former lovers, and from where they could walk past the Pantheon, to the Cathedral of Notre Dame by the banks of the River Seine. 
      Much has been written about the circumstances of Modigliani’s death. It seems he spent most of a week in his apartment, and may have seen a doctor daily. His old friend, the Chilean artist Manuel Ortiz de Zárat, visited him frequently. Jeanne, already pregnant with a second child, stayed with Amedeo constantly, perhaps feeding him only sardines and wine. “I have only a little piece of brain left...,” Modigliani told his friend, “…I know this is the end.” He died from what was presumed to be tuberculous meningitis in a Parisian charity hospital on Saturday evening, January 24, 1920. A day later, his common-law wife and unborn child died when young Jeanne threw herself from the bedroom window of her parent’s home to the cobblestone street below.


Acknowledgements: Images from SecretModigliani.com, some text excepts from Amedeo Modigliani:Drunken Bohemian or Contagious Consumptive.

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