This is a blog about the life and times of Amedeo Modigliani, the 20th century artist. It is designed for students or anyone who would like to learn about this artist. I have provided an extensive bibliography with many links to other sites that supply more information about Modigliani and his work. There are plenty of photos from the time period of Modigliani and also pictures of his artwork. Those are available for download free for educational use.
The site is also designed to be used as a source for research papers on this artist.
It covers his life, his works, his style, his death and some history on art nouveau , which was a major influence in Modiglianis work. Included are a number of sources meant to help people write papers on this topic.
I have tried to provide as much information as I could find on this artist in order to educate those who want to learn more about him.
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI: AN ARTIST’S LIFE
Amedeo Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy, on July 12th 1884. He did not inherit the traits of a prodigy or great talent of any kind. His education was so poor that he could barely read and write. His passion for art came at an early age when he discovered the pleasure of drawing and painting.
Description:
Amedeo Modigliani was a talented Italian painter who became famous for his portraits and nudes, as well as his sculptures. He is known for being one of the first artists to use Cubism, an avant-garde movement which incorporated multiple points of view into its works. The term Cubism stems from the word cube due to the shape’s resemblance to a rectangular box. His work can be found in museums around the world including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena California and The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg Russia.
Modigliani began his career as a sculptor after being influenced by Auguste Rodin and Constantin Brancusi but soon turned to painting the human
Modigliani left his home in Italy at fourteen to work in the studios of Paris, and he never returned. He was for a time obsessed with the beautiful Greek statue of Aphrodite, sculpted ca. 450 B.C., and worked from it as his own model.
Modigliani’s father, who had migrated to Livorno, Italy from northern Africa in order to escape anti-semitism, died when Modigliani was nine years old. Modigliani was born into a Sephardic Jewish family; he spent his early childhood first in Livorno and then in Rome, where his mother settled after his father’s death.
Modigliani’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was eighteen and pregnant with her second child. His daughter Léna, born five months later, lived only a few days.
Modigliani spent much of the next two years in hospitals and sanatoriums. He returned to Paris and studied art at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts from 1905 to 1906 under teachers including Henri Matisse, who had just returned from studying impressionism in Paris. Modigliani’s sister Rosa recalled that it was while he was working on this project that Modigliani developed an
In 1918 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his mother. In the following years, Modigliani’s health worsened; he collapsed several times and suffered seizures. He died in bed on January 24, 1920, aged 35, at his home in Paris. Modigliani was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.
The official cause of death was recorded as pleurisy (inflammation of the lungs’ lining). The doctor who issued the death certificate attributed the cause to “a general weakening of all organs”, which is not a specific or descriptive diagnosis, and some sources suggest Modigliani succumbed to tertiary syphilis, which is implied by his deteriorating physical condition prior to his death and by postmortem examination results.
Modigliani’s work was first exhibited in Paris in 1917. The paintings were almost universally rejected by critics and the public. Modigliani was heartbroken. No one wanted to buy his work, and no one thought it was good enough for a museum to buy. He didn’t live much longer after this first exhibition. After the war, however, his paintings became very popular, and today they are worth a fortune.
TODO: make sense of the rest. Or not?
My name is on the guest list, I am getting into the building and I am walking down the stairs to a basement. As I walk in and stand there, my heart is racing. I have no idea what this evening will bring, but it will be unforgettable.
A loud rap of a gavel brings me back to the present moment as I take my seat by the door. The lights dim, a spotlight illuminates a small stage and the music starts.
There are about 100 people there and about 20 artists who had come from all over to show their work. The room was dark except for the spotlight on the stage and then an artist would enter with his work in hand and set it up under the light. It was hard to tell how large or small each piece was being that they were not placed very far from each other, but they ranged from paintings to sculptures to masks.
The one thing they had in common was that they were all made out of recycled materials, which was what “e-waste” meant; electronic waste or garbage. Each artist explained his art piece using a microphone and each seemed so passionate about their work that it almost brought you to tears. They talked about how it was great to be able to use something that
Anyone who has taken a walk around the block and then turned back to look at the same street again will understand that we see a lot less than we think.
This is not just because of gaps in our visual field: many objects and events are too subtle, too brief, or too distant for us to notice. And if we do notice them, we often don’t register them properly.
The best way to demonstrate this is by using the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, which was demonstrated by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999.
In their experiment, people are shown a video of six students passing a basketball amongst themselves for about one minute. They are asked to count the number of passes made by one particular student wearing a white shirt. Just as everyone gets into the swing of counting passes, someone in a gorilla suit walks on screen from left to right across the line of vision and out of view.
The test subjects don’t notice the gorilla, even when they are told that it is there after they have seen the clip. And, when questioned afterwards, all will deny having noticed anything strange.
This demonstrates two things: firstly that we don’t see nearly as much as we think we do; secondly that what we do see
