if I Knew by Dawn Marie Huddleston Printed Art

Past Meryle Secrerst

Excerpted from the forthcoming book Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was a charismatic effigy about whom legends began to accumulate long before his death. His creative ability, hit good looks and extravagant manner of life set him autonomously fifty-fifty in Paris' bohemia at the turn of the century. A new, full-scale biography, Modigliani: A Life (Knopf, $35), due out on March iv, dispels many of the Modigliani myths. The author, Meryle Secrest, has published numerous biographies of art-globe figures, including Bernard Berenson, Salvador Dalí and Kenneth Clark.
In this sectional excerpt from Modigliani: A Life, we pick up the story in 1907. The Italian-built-in painter and sculptor has been living in Paris for a twelvemonth, and the money his indulgent family sent with him has run out. He has plant his manner into the same circles every bit Picasso, Braque, Utrillo and Apollinaire, simply is still in search of his creative direction. Modigliani has no dealer and cannot sell enough work to brand a living, then he finds himself depending on the charity of a fellow Italian, the café possessor Rosalie Tobia.

Rosalie Tobia was owner of a tiny restaurant, Chez Rosalie, on the rue Campagne Première, narrow, smoky, and dimly lit, reeking of boiled cabbage, which she ran with her son Luigi. While she stirred the soup with a wooden ladle, Luigi, in shirt sleeves and wrapped in a blue apron, would be drying glasses and dishes with a filthy rag. Rosalie had posed in the nude for Bouguereau, Carolus-Duran and Cabanel, and had had lovers. At that phase it was impossible to imagine, since she was completely shapeless, with sagging breasts, a muddy wearing apparel, and some sort of net or Neapolitan kerchief covering her stringy hair.

Chez Rosalie advertised itself as a crémerie, serving café au lait and chocolate, only was, in effect, a kind of personal charity. Rosalie would trudge to Les Halles before dawn each morning to buy the 24-hour interval's provisions, returning on the Métro with a sack on her back. She had a quick temper, ane that curtained a warm heart. Any devious dog or true cat at the door was certain of a meal. She besides fed mice and the rats in nearby stables, to the exasperation of her neighbors. Starving artists were some other specialty. She would assemble a grouping at ane of her four marble-topped tables, disappear into her minute kitchen, and appear with an enormous bowl of steaming spaghetti, then bang it downwards in the middle of the table. At that place would be cheap wine and few leftovers. Those who could pay, did. Those who could not, ate anyway.

Lunia Czechowska, who knew Modigliani in the last years of his life, explained that Rosalie had her protégés but Modigliani was in a category all his ain, "her god." He liked the Italian dishes she favored with plenty of oil and would say, "When I eat an oily dish it's similar kissing the mouth of a woman I dearest." If he had nowhere to stay he would bed downward on sacks in the back and, on good days, help Rosalie peel the potatoes and cord the beans. On bad days, she would attempt to go him to pay his bill and he would respond, "A man who has no money shouldn't die of hunger." That would start a fight. According to Czechowska, Modigliani'southward solution would be to commencement talking in French, which Rosalie barely spoke, and that would end the affair.

Payment was uncomplicated: another drawing, Rosalie complaining all the time that she had too many already. The legend, probably truthful, is that she kept them, covered with grease, in a kitchen closet, the rats gnawed away at them, and when she thought of cashing them in it was also late. Merely then, art appreciation was hardly Rosalie's strong point, despite the Modiglianis, Kislings, Picassos, Utrillos, and the like on the yellow-stained walls. The Russian Cubist painter Marevna (Marie Vorobieff) tells the story that, to atone for some of those free meals, Modigliani once painted a fresco on one of her walls. Rosalie was so disgusted that, next 24-hour interval, she made Luigi comprehend it up with white paint.

Gino Severini, the Futurist painter, recalled that he was having dinner ane evening in a Montmartre café when Modigliani appeared, sans le sou and looking very hungry. Severini invited him to join him, and Modigliani ordered a repast. Severini, nonetheless, had no money either and was eating on credit. As the end of the meal approached Severini became more than and more anxious. What was he to practise? Modigliani knew him well plenty to know that, once under the influence, Severini would collapse with laughter. So Modigliani quietly slipped him a small corporeality of hashish. It was an instant success. When the bill was presented Severini immediately saw the funny side. He smirked, he giggled, he let out a belly express mirth. It really was a joke. It was a riot. He cried with laughter. He was doubled up. He almost rolled on the floor. Evidence that he made a total spectacle of himself was not long in coming; the owner threw them both out.

Modigliani was exhibiting, trying to sell his work, and looking for a dealer. No longer was the Salon, that fortress of the creative establishment, the only place an artist could showroom, or even the Salon des Réfusés, established by the Impressionists in the 1860s. At present there was the Salon des Indépendants, established by such artists as Georges Seurat, Odilon Redon, and Paul Signac. And in that location was still some other anti-establishment venue, the Salon d'Automne. The creation of a prominent architect and author, Fritz Jourdain, the Salon d'Automne attracted a socially prominent crowd when it opened its doors in October 1903. At the Petit Palais, Proust, in white tie and tails, mingled with the politician Léon Blum and the aristocratic Comtesse de Noailles. It was a success on every count and became at once a major goal of every immature unknown. In 1907 the Salon accepted 7 works past Modigliani: the portrait of his friend the High german creative person Ludwig Meidner, a Study of a Head, and five watercolors.

Once again, zip sold. Just in this case, it hardly mattered. The consequence too exhibited 48 oils by Cézanne, the primary of Aix who had died the year earlier. His watercolors were concurrently on view at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Modigliani was taken by tempest. "Whenever Cézanne's proper noun was mentioned, a reverent expression would come over Modigliani's confront," the fine art historian Alfred Werner wrote. "He would, with a boring and secretive gesture, have from his pocket a reproduction of 'Boy With Red Vest,' hold it up to his face like a breviary, draw it to his lips and kiss information technology."

Modigliani was always sketching portraits of his friends, and in one case at Montmartre he joined the legions of "café artists" who made the rounds in the hope of finding willing sitters. Their methods varied piffling, according to Sisley Huddleston, an English writer who wrote well-nigh Montparnasse and Bohemia in the years between the wars. The artist, portfolio under his arm, would enter the café, size upwards the situation, and then wend his way through the tables. He was likely to stop hopefully and smile. At the to the lowest degree look of enquiry he had drawn up a chair and begun work. From long experience he knew the subject would be a lady, preferably wearing a splendid chapeau to which he would give close attention. If the artist had washed his work the portrait would be flattering, the lady delighted, and her escort perfectly willing to buy. Most artists, Huddleston said, were lucky to notice 3 willing subjects a night, and if they all bought he was even luckier.

Modigliani could be seen almost every dark at the Rotonde, with his nonchalant walk, his blue portfolio always under his arm, then "drawing ceaselessly in a notebook the pages of which he was forever violent out and crumpling up," wrote Francis Carco, a novelist and friend of the artist. Conrad Moricand, a painter, author, and astrologer, often watched him at work. He wrote that Modigliani would look with concentration on the face before him and then begin to draw with an incisive pencil. "His working method was always the same. He would brainstorm with the two essential points, first the olfactory organ of his model, which one finds emphasized in all his piece of work, side by side the eyes, with their different polarities, then the oral fissure and finally the outline of the face, delicately indicated by cantankerous- hatching." Equally he began piece of work his handsome face would contort itself into the most frightful grimaces and he would be deaf to everything going on around him, including the constant jokes and teasing. "He was normally good for four or five drawings similar this, sometimes more than, that were superb. The residual were ordinarily dissolved in drink."

Information technology took seven more years, but in 1914 Modigliani finally found a dealer. He was Guillaume Chéron on the rue la Boétie, a small, round, fat man who is portrayed by Modigliani with a bulbous nose higher up what passes for a moustache. Chéron began life every bit a bookmaker and vino merchant in the south of French republic and transferred to pictures subsequently he married the daughter of Devambez, a well-known dealer, and moved to Paris. Chéron knew nothing about art, and most memoirists paint him every bit boorish as well as ignorant. But he needed clients, realized the importance of publicity, and sent out booklets extolling the virtues of buying art every bit a financial investment. All that Chéron required were paintings, as cheap as possible. Those were the days when dealers collected stables of artists and paid daily stipends to get the piece of work. Modigliani received 10 francs a twenty-four hours. Chéron provided a studio, paints, brushes, canvass, a model, and the necessary canteen of brandy. The studio was in the basement, leading to several pulp accounts of Modigliani'south incarceration in a dungeon with a single window, locked in until he had produced a painting. Since the "basement" also contained a dining room where Chéron and guests lunched every day, the account seems as fanciful as most of the other reminiscences about Modigliani. He certainly did not complain virtually his quarters. He was absolutely delighted to accept a job. "Now I'm a paid worker on a salary," he told his friends. He and Chéron soon parted company, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Max Jacob, one of the many fascinating characters in the circle of Montparnasse in those days, had arrived in Modigliani'south life. Picasso biographer John Richardson wrote, "The pale, sparse gnome with foreign, piercing eyes . . . was a Frenchman—brilliant, quirkish, perverse—with whom [Picasso] found instant rapport . . . [H]e was infinitely perceptive nigh art besides every bit literature and an encyclopedia of erudition— as at abode in the arcane depths of mysticism as in the shallows of l'art populaire. He was likewise very, very funny." Jacob, a poet, creative person, writer, and art critic, knew and liked Modigliani, and the sentiment was returned. Jacob had studied philosophy, could recite poetry with as much confidence equally Modigliani, was addicted to ether and henbane, and was an alchemist. He had introduced Picasso to the Tarot and probably did the aforementioned for Modigliani. He was likewise adept at palmistry and famously had read Picasso'due south paw and perhaps Modigliani's as well, though there is no tape of this. But his master gift seems to have been as a facilitator, with a vast network of friends. Hearing that Modigliani and Chéron had parted ways, Jacob had an inspired idea: he would introduce him to Paul Guillaume.

Similar Jacob, Guillaume came from a modest groundwork and, also like Jacob, was born with an innate artful sense, rise similar a meteor from an entry-level job every bit a clerk in a rubber-importing visitor to a collector of African statues and so an expert on archaic art. He was still simply in his early 20s. On the other mitt he had met the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, who immediately sensed his unusual abilities and introduced him to the world of artists and sculptors. Most of them were looking, as was Modigliani, for someone who instinctively appreciated and understood their work and had the wit to promote it. In that respect Guillaume was sky sent. Aspiring art dealers usually started business in a modest manner in the rue de Seine on the Left Banking company with the goal of eventually reaching wealthier clients on the Correct Bank.

Guillaume, who did non have any fourth dimension to waste, started in the rue de Miromesnil, "a neighborhood dominated past the opulent, celebrated, institutional galleries," as the art historian Marc Restellini has written. It was the maddest folly from a business viewpoint, since artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Derain had already establish their dealers, but for unknowns it was an enormous slice of luck. Somehow Jacob, like Apollinaire, was convinced that Guillaume would get famous, as indeed happened with remarkable suddenness, and he decided to introduce the two men. The play a trick on would be to have Guillaume meet Modigliani as if by blow. In that location are alien versions of this story, merely they concord on some details. Jacob set the scene with care. He had a date to see Guillaume one afternoon at the Café du Dôme. Modigliani, as agreed, would arrive alee of them and make a show of passing his drawings effectually. His table would be nearby. Jacob was convinced that Guillaume would soon "discover" him.

All of it happened as Jacob planned. Guillaume drifted over to Modigliani'south table, liked the drawings, and sabbatum down. From here the versions differ. In the kickoff, when asked if he had any paintings to show, Modigliani curtly said he did not. No doubtfulness Modigliani thought of himself every bit a sculptor, but subsequently having gone to all the problem to phase a rendezvous it is hardly likely that he would have brusquely rejected the invitation he had been line-fishing for. The 2nd version is more probable. When Guillaume asked the aforementioned question Modigliani, who perhaps had been hoping to be asked about sculpture, nevertheless admitted that he did paint "a chip." He complained to Jacob about it afterward. Only he did accept the invitation and Guillaume did, indeed, become his new agent.

Like Derain and Giorgio de Chirico, whom Guillaume too represented, Modigliani painted several portraits of his dealer. Guillaume, who dressed with fastidious attention to detail, was as short equally Modigliani just not as good-looking. The proportions of his face were against him—cheekbones too wide, forehead much too low— and he had a certain humorless habit of parting his hair strictly in the middle and plastering it down, something that may have made him look older but did nothing to right the imbalance. He took to wearing hats with sizable crowns, which solved the problem of proportions, and 2 of Modigliani's portraits show him hatted. On a portrait painted in 1915 Modigliani has appended "Novo Piloto," and that was literally true. Modigliani badly needed a guiding paw forth with the publicity only a clever dealer could provide. A year afterward, Guillaume is withal wearing a hat and an arm rests negligently along the back of his chair. A right hand is visible, and just below it, Modigliani has signed his proper noun. Did he feel he was nether Guillaume's pollex? Was he being sufficiently grateful? An article written past Guillaume some months subsequently Modigliani'southward death in 1920 offers some clues.

"Because he was very poor and got drunk whenever he could, (Modigliani) was despised for a long time," Guillaume wrote, "even among artists, where certain forms of prejudice are more prevalent than is generally believed . . . He was shy and refined—a gentleman. Simply his clothes did not reverberate this, and if someone happened to offer him charity, he would become terribly annoyed." Who could forget his "foreign habit of dressing like a ragamuffin" that nevertheless "gave him a certain elegance, a stardom—nobility in the style of Milord d'Arsouille that was astonishing and sometimes frightening. One just had to hear him pompously reciting Dante in front of the Rotonde, afterward brasseries closed, deafened to the insults of the waiters, indifferent to the rain that soaked him to the bone."
One jump day in 1914 Alberto Magnelli, an Italian artist iv years Modigliani'southward junior, who happened to be in Paris studying Cubism, was strolling along the boulevard Montparnasse in a westerly management toward the railway station. It was a beautiful morning, and he was thinking of other things when he realized that the conductor of a tram, besides traveling in his direction, was ringing his bell violently and simultaneously applying his brakes with a great screeching noise. He looked up and saw a man on the opposite sidewalk crossing the street in front of the tram, walking similar an automaton straight toward information technology. He was jump to exist hit. With a offset, Magnelli realized it was Modigliani.

In a flash Magnelli had sprinted across the street and flung himself at Modigliani, whose eyes looked glassy and enormous. He wrote, "I do not know how I managed to get in front of him in time." He was and then close to the tram that information technology scraped him as it passed. As for Modigliani, he had been knocked to the ground and seemed, at that moment, to have come up to his senses. He was helped over to the sidewalk and the nearest café table, which happened to be at the Rotonde. Magnelli ordered a circular of drinks. About his narrow escape from death, Modigliani did non say a word.

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Source: https://www.artandantiquesmag.com/modigliani-finds-a-dealer/

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