A curious exhibition, “Modigliani Up Close.” It’s worth a visit, of course: any event that provides extra motivation to travel to the Barnes Foundation is, by default, recommended. Even without the current show, the permanent collection offers a veritable bounty of works by Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920)—sixteen in all, including Cypresses and Houses at Cagnes (1919), a rare landscape. In the exhibition’s accompanying catalogue, Thom Collins, the Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes, pays homage to the foresight of the museum’s namesake, extolling the manner in which Albert C. Barnes “broke new ground in the history of collecting modern art.” As curated by a host of international conservators—among them Barbara Buckley, the museum’s senior director of conservation and chief conservator of paintings—“Up Close” seeks to break ground in another fashion, by focusing on Modigliani’s approach to materials and process. In underscoring technical matters, the curatorial team aims to bring some clarity to the smoke-and-mirrors legend that surrounds Amedeo, the Doomed and Tragic Soul.
Modigliani proved a wild child.
Modigliani was born in Livorno, a port city on the western coast of Tuscany. His mother came from intellectual stock—the family claimed Baruch Spinoza as an ancestor—and his father was a businessman. The latter fell into bankruptcy the year Amedeo was born and was, at best, a peripatetic parent. Raised largely by his mother, Modigliani proved a vexing child. Prone to illness, he suffered from pleurisy, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis. Nonetheless, he had the wherewithal to study