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The Second Temple of Beauty
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Giorgione
Sleeping Venus
1508 |
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Sleeping Nude |
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Sleeping Nude |
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Reclining Nude with Blue Cushion
1917 |
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Sleeping Nude, Head on Right Arm
1919 |
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Titian
Venus of Urbino
1538 |
Nude with Necklace
1917 |
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Reclining Nude with Loose Hair
1917 |
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Modigliani, who never went to a state art academy, approached the
portrayal of the naked body with an eye that was schooled more by
art history than by an academically-shaped perception of the nude.
While he may have learned the fundamental, academically-normed
concepts of lifedrawing in art schools in Florence and Venice, he
may certainly be assumed to have encountered alternative approaches
to the study of the nude during his time at the Academie Colarossi
in Paris, where he enrolled in life-drawing classes in 1906 and
1907. The Academie Colarossi in Paris was one of the private
institutes, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, which
offered a progressive alternative to the state academies. The
special position of these academies in Paris, which also included
the famous Academie Julian, resulted from the fact that they also
accepted students from amongst the many foreigners living in Paris.
The instruction consisted above all in providing the students with
models whose poses they could then determine themselves. Unlike the
state academies, here one attempted to achieve more animated
expressions. Rather than spending hours drawing one pose, the
Academie Colarossi practised the so-called "fifteen-minute" nudes,
where the quick, sketch-like rendering of the pose was of primary
importance. Many drawings have been preserved from Modigliani's
first years in Paris that document his studies at these classes. In
the clearly defined lines of the early drawings one can already
recognise the virtuosity of Modigliani's nudes of 1917. In these
latter paintings, however, the movement and spontaneity of the
drawings have yielded to skilfully condensed compositions.
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Reclining Nude with Left Arm Resting on Forehead
1917 |
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Seductive beauty and sensuality, as well as artificiality and
coolness, are features of Modigliani's reclining nudes.
The cropped
composition gives the viewer the impression that he is standing
directly in front of the model.
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Moise Kisling
Nude on Red Divan
1918 |
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Reclining Nude
1917
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Recumbent Nude
1917 |
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In Modigliani's portraits of naked young women one can observe the
same tendency towards ornamental stylisation as in his portraits.
Once again, it is the suggestive drawing of softly curved lines
which sets off the contours of the figures against the surrounding planes and which
lends the paintings an elegant and delicate aura. Reduction and
abstraction are Modigliani's main means of creation. Apart from a
few summary details about the room surrounding the model - the
outlines of a sofa, a cushion or a white linen sheet - there is
nothing to distract from the young, rosy bodies. The sparing use of
colour - usually the characteristic, apricot-coloured flesh tone of
the nude contrasts with only one or two other tones - is evidence of
the strong concentration on formal demands. The stylised forms of
the female body are thereby provided with all the space they need
for their effective exposure. The female figures present themselves
to the viewer - are sometimes even lying in such a way - that they
almost seem to tip out of the painting towards him; sometimes their
wide eyes seem to be looking straight at him, and at other times
they have closed their eyes, as if they are asleep. What catches the
interest about Modigliani's alluring nudes - and this is another
difference between his interpretation and academic nude studies - is
their nakedness, their sensuality, their eroticism, their beauty.
Modigliani's nude paintings are not about the depiction of
naturalness and animation, as was the case with most of his
contemporaries. It is much more that the stylisation of the depicted
bodies lends the pictures grace, elegance and a high degree of
artificiality. Modigliani's treatment of the nude subject even has
something hermetic about it. In comparison to contemporary artists,
it is noticeable that there is little connection between
Modigliani's nudes and their historical context. On the contrary, if
one recalls that by 1917 - as the injured and wounded returned home
- the civilian population could no longer ignore the destructive power of the war and that by this time Modigliani's own health
was steadily worsening, the parade of rosy, healthy bodies awakens
the impression that this is a determined counter-programme to
reality. Completely in contrast to what he was experiencing in
reality - the destruction of bodies -Modigliani expressed an
artistic ideal and continued in his Utopian quest for timeless
harmony and beauty.
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Reclining Nude, Arms Folded under Her
Head
1916 |
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Modigliani's backwards-looking, idealising perception again
accentuates his affinity with the Symbolists and the
Pre-Raphaelites. His nudes are symbolic in their naked, physical
presence; the mere existence of the bodies forms the crux of the
picture, with background details uncharacterised and of little
importance. And despite their carnality, Modigliani's nudes always
have something sculptural about them. Even when they present
themselves flirtatiously, and thereby sometimes remind one of the
erotic photography that was so popular at the time, their sensuality
is never aggressive, but is always restrained and coloured by
melancholy. Modigliani's nudes are figures created by an artist.
Their beauty emits a stony coolness and dignity. One could say that
with this series of nudes - which he painted within a short span of
time - Modigliani erected a second temple of beauty, for these
paintings exhibit the same rapt sublimity as his carvings; their
ideal beauty undergoes the same poetic transfiguration. Under
Modigliani's lyric eye, the posing models become modern Venus
figures, combining spirituality and liberality.
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Nude Looking over Her Right Shoulder
1917 |
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After his concentration on the nude in 1917, in the following years
Modigliani only occasionally portrayed naked bodies. The nude Elvira, painted in the South of France in 1919, illustrates
the brighter palette that was typical of this phase of Modigliani's
work. The frontal presentation of the standing model again highlights the importance of the
sculptural in Modigliani's painting. Because Modigliani restricted
himself to rendering the contours of the figure and to the painterly
composition of the planes, the depiction of the person is condensed
into the presentation of her pure existence, given permanency by the
painting. Towards the end of his life, Modigliani managed to imbue
many of the figures in his paintings with an expression that went
beyond the purely individual. This is particularly evident in the
portraits of anonymous models painted in the South of France. In
these paintings, Modigliani's stylisation of the human being
achieves its highest form.
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Standing Nude - Elvira
1919
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Blonde Nude |
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