If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

Edward Hopper

American painter, whose highly individualistic works are landmarks of American realism. His paintings embody in art a particular American 20th-century sensibility that is characterized by isolation, melancholy, and loneliness.
Hopper was born on July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York, and studied illustration in New York City at a commercial art school from 1899 to 1900. Around 1901 he switched to painting and studied at the New York School of Art until 1906, largely under Robert Henri. He made three trips to Europe between 1906 and 1910 but remained unaffected by current French and Spanish experiments in cubism. He was influenced mainly by the great European realists—Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumier, Edouard Manet—whose work had first been introduced to him by his New York City teachers. His early paintings, such as Le pavillon de flore, were committed to realism and exhibited some of the basic characteristics that he was to retain throughout his career: compositional style based on simple, large geometric forms; flat masses of color; and the use of architectural elements in his scenes for their strong verticals, horizontals, and diagonals.
Although one of Hopper’s paintings was exhibited in the famous Armory Show of 1913 in New York City, his work excited little interest, and he was obliged to work principally as a commercial illustrator for the next decade. In 1925 he painted House by the Railroad, a landmark in American art that marked the advent of his mature style. The emphasis on blunt shapes and angles and the stark play of light and shadow were in keeping with his earlier work, but the mood—which was the real subject of the painting—was new: It conveyed an atmosphere of all-embracing loneliness and almost eerie solitude.
Hopper continued to work in this style for the rest of his life, refining and purifying it but never abandoning its basic principles. Most of his paintings portray scenes in New York or New England, both country and city scenes, all with a spare, homely quality—deserted streets, half-empty theaters, gas stations, railroad tracks, rooming houses. One of his best-known works, Nighthawks, shows an all-night café, its few uncommunicative customers illuminated in the pitiless glare of electric lights.
Although Hopper’s work was outside the mainstream of mid-20th-century abstraction, his simplified schematic style was one of the influences on the later representational revival and on pop art. He died May 15, 1967, in New York City.

http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Hopper.htm

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett (October 21, 1891 – June 7, 1971) was an advertising executive famous for creating such icons as the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Toucan Sam, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the 7up “Spot”, and Tony the Tiger.
In 1935, he created his own agency in Chicago, which is now known as Leo Burnett Worldwide. He was inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame in 1961, and retired in 1967.
Burnett followed Walter Lippman’s philosophy of creating an image around the product. Until his time, advertising centered on long text descriptions of the product, with detailed arguments as to why it was better than competing products. Burnett concentrated on style, creating icons as a symbol of the product. He stressed that the creator of an ad needed to somehow capture and reflect what he called the “inherent drama” of the product.
One of his most important uses of internal corporate symbols were the red apples placed on every receptionist’s desk. Any visitor or employee was free to take one. This stemmed from a prediction from a Chicago newspaper columnist that Leo would fail miserably in his agency launch in 1935, made in the depths of the Great Depression, and would soon be on the street selling apples instead. Upon reading those words, Leo vowed to give away apples instead.
Another important internal symbol Leo Burnett created was an icon of a ‘hand reaching for the stars’, which he explained with the saying, “When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either”.
A third symbol was the “black pencil”, an Alpha 245 of the type commonly used by Burnett in his lifetime. To Burnett it symbolised a commitment to the warmth and humanity of ideas, and to the work of the people who create them.
Burnett’s use of the animation medium to sell products was slyly given a nod in the anime series Pokémon. Disguised as muffled backwards dialogue, the character James of Team Rocket, is heard mumbling a line in the grip of a Pokémon’s mouth. The line is “Leo Burnett and 4Kids are the devil, Leo Burnett!”, mocking both Leo’s introduction of animated commercialism, and 4Kids (who are known for upsetting fans with poor anime dubbing), which promotes the Nintendo games of the same title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.

Happy Birthday Edgar Degas

Degas, (Hilaire-Germain-) Edgar (b. July 19, 1834, Paris, Fr.–d. Sept. 27, 1917, Paris)
French artist, acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. Degas worked in many mediums, preferring pastel to all others. He is perhaps best known for his paintings, drawings, and bronzes of ballerinas and of race horses.

The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters, although he took part in all but one of the 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. Degas was the son of a wealthy banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example pointed him in the direction of a classical draftsmanship, stressing balance and clarity of outline. After beginning his artistic studies with Louis Lamothes, a pupil of Ingres, he started classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but left in 1854 and went to Italy. He stayed there for 5 years, studying Italian art, especially Renaissance works.

Returning to Paris in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects, in which he combined classical and romantic styles. In Paris, Degas came to know Édouard Manet, and in the late 1860s he turned to contemporary themes, painting both theatrical scenes and portraits with a strong emphasis on the social and intellectual implications of props and setting.

In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision. On a visit in 1872 to Louisiana, where he had relatives in the cotton business, he painted The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans (finished 1873; Musée Municipal, Pau, France), his only picture to be acquired by a museum in his lifetime. Other subjects from this period include the racetrack, the beach, and cafe interiors.
After 1880, Pastel became Degas’s preferred medium. He used sharper colors and gave greater attention to surface patterning, depicting milliners, laundresses, and groups of dancers against backgrounds now only sketchily indicated. For the poses, he depended more and more on memory or earlier drawings. Although he became guarded and withdrawn late in life, Degas retained strong friendships with literary people. In 1881 he exhibited a sculpture, Little Dancer (a bronze casting of which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and as his eyesight failed thereafter he turned increasingly to sculpture, modeling figures and horses in wax over metal armatures. These sculptures remained in his studio in disrepair and were cast in bronze only after his death.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/degas/

Of all lies, art is the least true.

 Gustave Flaubert

French novelist of the realist school, best-known for MADAME BOVARY (1857), a story of adultery and unhappy love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. As a writer Flaubert was a perfectionist, who did not make a distinction between a beautiful or ugly subject: all was in the style. The idea, he argued, only exists by virtue of its form – its elements included the perfect word, cunningly contrived and verified rhythms, and a genuine architectural structure.

“Has it ever happened to you,” Leon went on, “to come across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?”
“I have experienced it,” she replied.
“That is why,” he said, “I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.” (from Madame Bovary)

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen into a family of doctors. His father, Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, a chief surgeon at the Rouen municipal hospital, made money investing in land. Flaubert’s mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline (née Fleuriot), was the daughter of a physician; she became the most important person in the author’s life. Anne-Justine-Caroline died in 1872.

Flaubert started to write during his school years. At the age of fifteen he won a prize for an essay on mushrooms. Actually his work was a copy. A disappointment in his teens – Flaubert fell in love with Elisa Schlésinger, who was married and some 10 years his senior – inspired much of his early writing. His bourgeois background Flaubert found early burdensome, and eventually his rebel against it led to his expulsion from school. Flaubert completed his education privately in Paris.

In the 1840s Flaubert studied law at Paris, a brief episode in his life, and in 1844 he had a nervous attack. “I was cowardly in my youth,” Flaubert wrote once to George Sand. “I was afraid of life.” He recognized from suffering a nervous disease, although it could have been epilepsy. However, the diagnosis changed Flaubert’s life. He failed his law exams and decided to devote himself to literature. In this Flaubert was helped by his father who bought him a house at Croisset, on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen.

In 1846 Flaubert met the writer Louise Colet. They corresponded regularly and she became Flaubert’s mistress although they met infrequently. Colet gave in Lui (1859) her account of their relationship. After the death of both his father and his married sister, Flaubert moved at Croisset, the family’s country home near Rouen. Until he was 50 years old, Flaubert lived with his mother – he was called ”hermit of Croisset.” The household also included his niece Caroline. His maxim was: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Although Flaubert once stated ”I am a bear and want to remain a bear in my den,” he kept good contacts to Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848. Later he received honors from Napoleon III. From 1856 Flaubert spent winters in Paris.

Flaubert’s relationship with Collet ended in 1855. From November 1849 to April 1851 he travelled with the writer Maxime du Camp in North Africa, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It took several Egyptian guides to help Flaubert to the top of the Great Pyramid – the muscular, almost six feet tall author was at that time actually relatively fat. On his return Flaubert started Madame Bovary, which took five years to complete. It appeared first in the Revue (1856) and in book form next year. The realistic depiction of adultery was condemned as offensive to morality and religion. Flaubert was prosecuted, though he escaped conviction, which was not a common result during the official censorship of the Second Empire. When Baudelaire’s provocative collection of verse, The Flowers of Evil, was brought before the same judge, Baudelaire was fined and 6 of the 100 poems were suppressed.

Madame Bovary was published in two volumes in 1857, but it appeared originally in the Revue de Paris, 1856-57. – Emma Bovary is married to Charles Bovary, a physician. As a girl Emma has read Walter Scott, she has romantic dreams and longs for adventure. “What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.” Emma seeks release from the boredom of her marriage from love affairs with two men – with the lawyer Léon Dupuis and then with Rodolphe Boulanger. Emma wants to leave her husband with him. He rejects the idea and Emma becomes ill. After she has recovered, she starts again her relationship with Léon, who works now in Rouen. They meet regularly at a hotel. Emma is in heavy debts because of her lifestyle and she poisons herself with arsenic. Charles Bovary dies soon after her and their daughter Berthe is taken care of poor relatives. Berthe starts to earn her living by working in a factory. – The novel created an outrage. Flaubert was even tried and acquitted on charges of immorality for it. The character of Emma was important to the author – society offered her no escape and once Flaubert said: “Emma, c’est moi.” Delphine Delamare, who died in 1848, is alleged to have been the original of Emma Bovary.

In the 1860s Flaubert enjoyed success as a writer and intellectual at the court of Napoleon III. Among his friends were Zola, George Sand, Hippolyte Taine, and the Russian writer Turgenev, with whom he shared similar aesthetic ideals – dedication to realism, and to the nonjudgmental representation of life. Their complete correspondence was published in English in 1985. ”The thought that I shall see you this winter quite at leisure delights me like the promise of an oasis,” he wrote to Turgenev. “The comparison is the right one, if only you knew how isolated I am! Who is there to talk to now? Who is there in our wretched country who still ‘cares about literature’? Perhaps one single man? Me! The wreckage of a lost world, an old fossil of romanticism! You will revive me, you’ll do me good.” (from Flaubert & Turgenev. A Friendship in Letters, edited and translated by Barbara Beaumont, 1985)

Flaubert was by nature melancholic. His perfectionism, long hours at his work table with a frog inkwell, only made his life harder. In a letter to Ernest Feydeau he wrote: “Books are made not like children but like pyramids… and are just as useless!” Flaubert’s other, non-literary life was marked by his prodigious appetite for prostitutes, which occasionally led to venereal infections. “It may be a perverted taste,” Flaubert said, “but I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects.” His last years were shadowed by financial worries – he helped with his modest fortune his niece’s family after their bankruptcy. Flaubert died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 8, in 1880.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/flaubert.htm

Does not the very word ‘creative’ mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act – rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective?

Happy Birthday Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott can be considered the photographer of New York City. A revolutionary documentary photographer, Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918 to study sculpture. While in New York, Abbott met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, two of the founders of the Dada movement, an artistic intellectual movement that emerged as a protest to the senseless suffering of World War I. Dada artists sought to question convention and tradition through seemingly nonsensical works presented in performances, literature, and the visual arts.

Moving on to Europe in the 1920s, Abbott worked from 1925 to 1929 as a photographic assistant to May Ray in Paris. Through her work printing Man Ray’s photographs, Abbott herself discovered her talent as a photographer. In 1926 Abbott had her first solo exhibition in the Parisian gallery, Le Sacre du Printemps. This exhibition featured Abbott’s portrait photography in which she captured personalities associated with avant-garde art movements. Portraits of film director Jacques Cocteau, author James Joyce, artist Max Ernst, and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay were featured. During this time, Abbott also became interested in the work of Eugène Atget, a leading French photographer who was celebrated for his photographs of the streets of Paris.

Upon Abbott’s return to New York in 1929, she moved away from portrait photography to documentary photography akin to Atget’s images, using the city as her subject. During the 1930s she embarked on a project to capture the transformation of New York into a modern urban center. Abbott was particularly interested in the physical changes that the city had undergone, its changing neighborhoods with huge skyscrapers replacing older low-rise buildings. She began a series of documentary photographs of the city as part of a Federal Works Project Administration initiative carried out from 1935 to 1939. At the end of the project, she published her photographs as a book entitled Changing New York. Abbott favored a straightforward, yet dynamic, style that featured strong contrasts and dramatic angles. “Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium,” Abbott said, “it has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”

Abbott became picture editor for Science Illustrated in the 1940s and continued in that role through the 1960s, expanding her subject matter to include scientific images. She moved to Maine in 1966 and continued as a science photographer, approaching the world around her methodically, as she had done with her portraits and images of New York. Abbott continued her photography until her death in 1991.

http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/abbott-bio.htm

Photography is nature seen from the eyes outwards. Painting is nature seen from the eyes inwards.

Happy Birthday Charles Sheeler

Charles Sheeler was born in Philadelphia in 1883 and studied in the School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadlphia. Although he supported himself at that time as an architectural photographer, he dabled in vernacular art and architecture during the weeekends.

During the 1920s, Sheeler was associated with a group of painters called the Precisionists, known for their realistic style of painting. Sheeler focused strongly on industrial subjects and was a distinguished photographer of machines; surprising based on the fact that the subject was rather unpopular between the wars.

In painting Upper Deck (a portrait of the USS Majestic) during 1928, Sheeler perfected a method of acheving photogrphic quality with paint. Accuracy in painting would continue to be his mark, as seen in Steam Turbine. He also transfered his exacteness to abstract art.

http://www.angelfire.com/co/pscst/sheeler.html

Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know

Happy Birthday Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Rembrandt was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606 – his full name Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He was the son of a miller. Despite the fact that he came from a family of relatively modest means, his parents took great care with his education. Rembrandt began his studies at the Latin School, and at the age of 14 he was enrolled at the University of Leiden. The program did not interest him, and he soon left to study art – first with a local master, Jacob van Swanenburch, and then, in Amsterdam, with Pieter Lastman, known for his historical paintings. After six months, having mastered everything he had been taught, Rembrandt returned to Leiden, where he was soon so highly regarded that although barely 22 years old, he took his first pupils. One of his students was the famous artist Gerrit Dou.

Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631; his marriage in 1634 to Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of a successful art dealer, enhanced his career, bringing him in contact with wealthy patrons who eagerly commissioned portraits. An exceptionally fine example from this period is the Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts (1631, Frick Collection, New York City). In addition, Rembrandt’s mythological and religious works were much in demand, and he painted numerous dramatic masterpieces such as The Blinding of Samson (1636, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). Because of his renown as a teacher, his studio was filled with pupils, some of whom (such as Carel Fabritius) were already trained artists. In the 20th century, scholars have reattributed a number of his paintings to his associates; attributing and identifying Rembrandt’s works is an active area of art scholarship.

Rembrandt produced many of his works in this fashionable town house in Amsterdam (above left). Purchased by the artist in 1639, when he was 33, it proved to be the scene of personal tragedy: his wife and three of his children died here. The house became a financial burden, and in 1660 Rembrandt was forced to move. A new owner added the upper story and roof, giving it the appearance it still bears. In 1911 the Dutch movement made it a Rembrandt museum -preserving it both as a shrine of a revered national artist and as an imposing example of 17th Century Dutch architecture.

In contrast to his successful public career, however, Rembrandt’s family life was marked by misfortune. Between 1635 and 1641 Saskia gave birth to four children, but only the last, Titus, survived; her own death came in 1642- at the age of 30. Hendrickje Stoffels, engaged as his housekeeper about 1649, eventually became his common-law wife and was the model for many of his pictures. Despite Rembrandt’s financial success as an artist, teacher, and art dealer, his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656. An inventory of his collection of art and antiquities, taken before an auction to pay his debts, showed the breadth of Rembrandt’s interests: ancient sculpture, Flemish and Italian Renaissance paintings, Far Eastern art, contemporary Dutch works, weapons, and armor. Unfortunately, the results of the auction – including the sale of his house – were disappointing.

These problems in no way affected Rembrandt’s work; if anything, his artistry increased. Some of the great paintings from this period are The Jewish Bride (1665), The Syndics of the Cloth Guild (1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Bathsheba (1654, Louvre, Paris), Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph (1656, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel, Germany), and a self-portrait (1658, Frick Collection). His personal life, however, continued to be marred by sorrow. His beloved Hendrickje died in 1663, and his son, Titus, in 1668- only 27 years of age. Eleven months later, on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt died in Amsterdam.

brief biography above from: WEB GALLERY OF ART, http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

Whoever wants to know something about me (as an artist, the only notable thing) ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.

Happy Birthday Gustav Klimt

The work of the Austrian painter and illustrator Gustav Klimt, b. July 14, 1862, d. Feb. 6, 1918, founder of the school of painting known as the Vienna Sezession, embodies the high-keyed erotic, psychological, and aesthetic preoccupations of turn-of-the-century Vienna’s dazzling intellectual world.

He has been called the preeminent exponent of ART NOUVEAU. Klimt began (1883) as an artist-decorator in association with his brother and Franz Matsoh. In 1886-92, Klimt executed mural decorations for staircases at the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; these confirmed Klimt’s eclecticism and broadened his range of historical references. Klimt was a cofounder and the first president of the Vienna Secession, a group of modernist architects and artists who organized their own exhibition society and gave rise to the SECESSION MOVEMENT, or the Viennese version of Art Nouveau. He was also a frequent contributor to Ver Sacrum, the group’s journal.

Among the important decorative projects undertaken by Klimt were his celebrated Beethoven frieze (1902; Osterreichische Galerie), a cycle of mosaic decorations for Josef Hofmann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-09), and numerous book illustrations.

The primal forces of sexuality, regeneration, love, and death form the dominant themes of Klimt’s work. His paintings of femmes fatales, such as Judith I (1901; Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna), personify the dark side of sexual attraction. The Kiss (1907-08; Osterreichische Galerie) celebrates the attraction of the sexes; and Hope I (1903; National Gallery, Ottawa) juxtaposes the promise of new life with the destroying force of death. The sensualism and originality of Klimt’s art led to a hostile reaction to his three ceiling murals–Philosophy (1900), Medicine (1901), and Jurisprudence (1902)–for the University of Vienna.

Klimt’s style drew upon an enormous range of sources: classical Greek, Byzantine, Egyptian, and Minoan art; late-medieval painting and the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer; photography and the symbolist art of Max Klinger; and the work of both Franz von Stuck and Fernand Khnopff. In synthesizing these diverse sources, Klimt’s art achieved both individuality and extreme elegance.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klimt/

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

 Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel

Fashion Designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971) was born in Saumur, Southern France. She began by designing hats, first in Paris in 1908, and later in Deauville. Her fashion boutiques (one in Paris and one in Deauville) opened simultaneously in 1914. She opened an haute couture salon in Biarritz in 1916, and in 1920 moved to Paris in the present quarters on rue Cambon. Ready-to-wear fashions were not introduced until 1978, after Coco’s death.

Chanel was famous for popularizing practical clothes, including pants for women, little black dresses, and box-like collarless jackets with bias edging and brass buttons. Her first fabrics included wool jersey, which was comfortable and easy fitting, but was not considered suitable for fashionable clothes. Traditional Chanel accessories include multiple strands of pearls and gold chains, quilted handbags, sling-back pumps in ivory with black toes, quilted handbags with shoulder straps made of gold chain, and gardenias. She liked to mix imitation jewels with real jewels and often combined massive amounts with sportswear.

Chanel’s business was interrupted by World War I and again in 1939 at the beginning of World War II, after which it did not reopen until 1953.

After her death in her Paris apartment in 1971, first her assistant designers, Gaston Berthelot and Ramon Esparza, and then her assistants Yvonne Dudel and Jean Cazaubon designed the couture (1975-83). Philippe Guibourge became the ready-to-wear designer. Karl Lagerfeld took over haute couture design in 1983 and ready-to-wear design in 1984. He rehashes her trademark styles annually in various fabrics.

http://www.infomat.com/whoswho/gabriellechanel.html

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

Happy Birthday Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani, a painter and a sculptor, was born July 2, 1884, in Livorno, Italy. Modigliani came from a wealthy background. His family were Sephardic Jews, and when his father’s career was ruined as a banker, he was forced to work as a wood and coal merchant. Sadly, Amedeo lost his father while still a young boy. 

Modigliani’s health was very delicate, as he had very weak lungs, which he had inherited from his family. He had many close calls with pneumonia while he was growing up and spent many years being cared for by his worried mother and sisters. He developed  tuberculosis and battled with it for the rest of his life. His mother had been the first one to notice and encourage his incredible talent and she sent him to study at art academies in Florence and Venice. Finally, in 1902, when he was 17yrs, he left for Venice, excited about beginning his art studies.

Five years later in 1907, he arrived in Paris, ready for fame and fortune, but within weeks he found himself penniless, and had to move from one seedy hotel to another. He was getting out ‘n’ about however, and meeting all the famous writers and artists of the day from Picasso to Utrillo. According to a good friend of his, he looked very dashing in his brown corduroy coat that he wore everywhere, the bright scarf around his neck, and his broad felt hat. He was very handsome, brooding and thought of as eccentric by his close friends. Modigliani did crazy things in Paris, like dancing in the moonlight with a famous prostitute and getting jailed for drunkenness constantly. He was very successful at attracting women, who found him quite irresistable, and he could always find willing models to paint. Modigliani was involved in one love affair after another, and was completely swallowed up by the dark side of the Parisian nightlife. Women quite fascinated him, and he once said, “Women of beauty worth painting or sculpting, often seem encumbered by their clothes”. 

In 1909, he found himself in a sticky patch. He really needed money, and he had to keep moving from one tiny studio to another, to escape angry landlords. He was even reduced at one time, to pushing his belongings in a wheelbarrow through the streets. He wasn’t taking care of himself and was always coming down with infections. Finally, he had to return to his home in Italy that summer, to recover and regain his strength. He returned to Paris and then in 1913, his health worsened. His lungs were giving him a lot of trouble, and each time he got sick, he would go home to recover. He was constantly drinking and using drugs and was thoroughly miserable. He was wasting his talents as much as he wasted his money. He could never make enough money to live and was used to selling his drawings for only a few sous. He drifted from cafe to cafe and attic to attic. 

He made friends with the sculptor Brancusi, who introduced him to African sculpture. Modigliani was utterly fascinated with the simplicity of African masks and art and kept it all in mind when he painted his portraits. He never really mastered the medium of sculpture and left many pieces unfinished, but from this time on, his paintings were far more influenced by what he had learnt through sculpture. 

At Zborowski’s home, a Polish friend and poet, Modigliani met his beloved, Jeanne Hebuterne, who was also a very talented young artist. Amedeo was over the moon with Jeanne and they fell deeply in love, married and soon had a son. 

With Zborowski’s encouragement, Modigliani agreed to opening an art show on Oct 3rd, 1917. This was to be his first show and he didn’t know what to expect. He had gathered together a total of 32 paintings and drawings. Almost nothing sold, except for some drawings. His show was actually closed for ‘indecency’ the same day it opened. In desperate financial trouble and very ill, his good friend, Zborowski, paid for the couple to go to Nice for the winter. 

In 1918, Jeanne gave birth to a daughter. Amedeo was overjoyed, but he soon had to begin moving his little family around from hotel to hotel. Amedeo was terribly ashamed at not having enough money to support his family. Jeanne even left their little daughter with her wet nurse, and began to paint once more, using her husband as her model. 

Modigliani became weaker and weaker, yet still he continued to paint the people around them. He was a remarkable painter, and it shows through his compelling portraits. He often deliberately chose sickly children to paint, feeling a connection with them and their sickness. He had a love of the humble people, which he expressed in his drawings, his paintings and his choice of models. He would often be seen on the terraces, drawing portraits and then offering them to his subjects, in the hope of getting a drink in return. 

In the middle of January, his friends found him as he lay dying in his studio, next to his distraught wife. They took him to a hospital, where he later died of tubercular meningitis, combined with the affects of too much alcohol and drugs. Amedeo Modigliani died while just 36yrs, January 25th, 1920. The next day, his hysterical wife threw herself from a window of her parent’s home. Jeanne was 9 months pregnant and carrying their third child at the time. Sadly, both Jeanne and her unborn child died instantly.

Modigliani was an artist whose paintings are dominated by his sense of linear design. He used line exclusively to suggest body and form, with skill and sensitivity. He used distortion as a way of highlighting characteristics of his subjects, and perhaps, maybe even their personalities? Modigliani developed his own unique style, surrounded by artists experimenting with impressionism, surrealism, and cubism. Many of his subject’s heads are elegantly bowed with swan-like necks, and sloping shoulders. The effect is delicate and gentle, yet you feel the people in these paintings are almost aloof, in a dreamy kind of way. His faces are very distinctive with the long thin noses, the empty almond-shaped eyes, and the tiny pursed lips. The eyes are so haunting and when I look at them, it seems odd that they look quite normal in his paintings, as if everyone has empty eyes. Some people feel he played on the sickness in humanity, while others (myself included), recognize it as a new definition in breathtaking beauty. 

Source: “Amedeo Modigliani.” A dozen lilacs in a shoebox.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/modigliani.html