Modigliani, Tate Modern
Enormous exhibition, rammed to the gills when I went, a couple of weeks ago when it had just opened. Best or most interesting ones are Nudo Dolente (1908), very rough, upward looking; the breastless nude girl on the reverse canvas in the first room; the Gaston Modot portrait with the long, thick neck (maybe because it’s the fabulous Modot, the mad-eyed hero of l’Age d’Or and the violent gamekeeper of Regle de Jour);
The portraits of Cendrars, Cocteau and Brancusi, on the reverse of the Cellist.
Blaise Cendrars
There is a corner of beautiful nudes at the end of the exhibition; these, I think, are marred a little by the come hither or demure expressions worn.
I was interested by the eyes – Modigliani has a habit of blacking or scratching out the pupil of one eye in many of the portraits; I was beginning to think he had problems with aligning the gaze, but then noticed several where the pupils were not effaced and were correctly aligned. So that remains a puzzle. I also have to say that the pictures of Jeanne Hebuterne (Modigliani’s lover, who killed herself after his death, by jumping, pregnant, from a window) don’t look at all like her photograph.
Caravaggio, Sebastian Schutze (Taschen)
Ploughing on through the Taschen book, I notice that there is a marked change in the flesh tones and dark backgrounds he used in several paintings done in Sicily in 1608/9; the Burial of St. Lucy, for example, and the Raising of Lazarus both have a dusty golden flesh tone and a warm brown background darkness, contrasting with the starker contrasts and whiter flesh of earlier and later paintings. Maybe its to do with the light in Sicily; I’m sure the repros are not at fault, as Taschen is pretty reliable.
Happy End (Michael Haneke, 2017)
Saw this at the Ritzy in Brixton and was unable to make sense of the first 20-odd minutes, due, I thought, to some demented soul drumming on the wall of the cinema. When I could stand it no more, I stormed out to complain and discovered it was flamenco dancing night in the studio upstairs.
I eventually (after the dancing ceased) managed to make sense of the story – mostly – but the difficulty might have been just as much a result of Haneke’s narrative style; things happen and you find out what’s going on later. Quite common now and OK, as long as the flamenco dancers keep away…
There are some other typical Haneke tropes; the lack of sentimentality, to put it mildly, and the sudden violence. I was reminded of the sudden, shocking suicide in Hidden. It also recalled Festen in places, notably the scene where the son turns up at the engagement dinner, with a reluctant group of African asylum seekers in tow. Isabelle Huppert is her chilly “self” and Jean-Louis Trintignant is brilliant as a determined, wheelchair-bound, would-be suicide. It’s a black comedy, apparently…
Walter Hopps, The Dream Colony – A Life in Art (Bloomsbury, 2017)
This cost me £30, which I thought was a lot for a book of 300-odd pages, but I’m so glad that I bought it. Hopps was the founder of the Ferus Gallery in LA and later, a groundbreaking curator in museums and collections in California. He was running a gallery, working nights in a mortuary, addicted to speed, living hand to mouth, nurturing wealthy collectors – simultaneously. He drops into the narrative – it’s “as told” to Deborah Treisman of the New Yorker – surprising asides such as “My mother was dating an actor named Marion Morrison, later better known as John Wayne”, or “at the time I was living with Charles Mingus”…
The story of Ferus, Hopps’ relationship with the smooth Irving Blum and with the macho Ferus artists is also told in the film “The Cool School” and the book has some interesting contrasts with the film, notably in the area of Blum’s marriage to Hopps’ ex- wife, Shirley Neilson and Blum’s re-purchase of the Warhol soup can pictures. And, of course, there are the passages on the great Ed Kienholz and the tragic story of the collector Edwin Janss, who threw himself out of a 12th floor hospital window, following an incapacitating stroke.
So, sorry – suicide in Modigliani, Haneke and Hopps; not in Caravaggio, however; he killed Tomassoni in a brawl in Rome and then, maybe, wounded another in a brawl in Malta.
Two new pictures to end with:
Red Plume
Green Plume
Blackpaint
12/12/17
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