Writings by Pat Hartman.
My main claim to fame is the zine Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics, 25 issues published from 1988 to 1998. My book, Call Someplace Paradise, can be found here.
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Tuesday, September 09, 2003
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Category: Soap Operas of the Great and Famous
Widely acknowledged as the handsomest man in Paris, Amedeo Modigliani provided fuel for the cherished stereotype of the wild and crazy artist. The bohemian quarter of Montparnesse was inhabited by prostitutes, models, and art students who paraded naked through the streets. Modi joined the fun by performing more than one public striptease. Undressing for an audience seems to have been rather a habit with him. After a bath, he would go out on the balcony in his birthday suit to pose and dry by evaporation. When he met a dancer at a club, they locked themselves in a shed and lived for days on alcohol, cocaine and sex, finally emerging to dance naked to the edification of passers-by.
"If a woman poses for you she gives herself to you," was Modigliani's creed. The art dealer Cheron would lock him in the basement with a servant girl and a bottle of booze, and not let him out till a painting was done. The enterprising dealer would give the artist 15 francs and sell the painting for 200.
Modi had charming personal habits. While living in a rented house, he amused himself by spitting at the walls to see how high he could make a mark.
At a friend's 1909 New Year's Eve party, Modi stood at the door handing out nuggets of hashish to the guests. Later he set fire to the punch bowl. The blaze spread to the decorations, causing a panic and nearly burning the place down.
One of his women had a lover who was a lawyer, who set out to do him physical harm, but Modi took him to a cafe, sympathized with him, let him buy glass after glass of liquor, and they emerged as friends.
Alcohol was a problem. One of his best friends said that when he was drunk (which was often) "he was crazily irritable and hypersensitive for reasons he did not seem to know." His painting Rose Nude almost didn't survive. When a friend intruded on a work session, the artist became so enraged he threatened to throw the naked model down the stairs and destroy the canvas.
It wasn't easy being Modigliani's friend. If you were Drouard, he might smash one of your sculptures, or if you were Doucet, slash one of your paintings. After a drunken night with Utrillo, Modi pawned his friend's overcoat. Utrillo went berserk and ended up in a lunatic asylum.
Friends would often find Modigliani unconscious on the floor of his studio, or worse, in the street, in which case they would have to carry him up five flights of stairs to his room.
It wasn't easy being his lover, either. A woman who was three months pregnant with his child got him to write a document promising marriage. Accidentally or intentionally, he got her name wrong. When Simone Thiroux gave birth to Modigliani's son, he refused to acknowledge the child as his, and publicly called Simone a slut. In a letter to a friend, he pontificated: "The best gift you can give a woman is a kid. But stop there. They mustn't upset art, but serve it. Up to us to watch out."
One of his lovers was Beatrice Hastings, a femme fatale who may have been a spy for the Germans. He got her attention by sleeping naked among the plants in her garden. He beat her and once pushed her out a window. Fortunately, they were on the first floor at the time. He was also known to lock her out of the quarters where they cohabited, and once tried to set the house on fire.
Another of his mistresses was Jeanne Hebuterne, whom he was observed dragging around by the hair. Jeanne gave birth to his daughter, at about the same time when another woman, Therese, bore his son. The daughter was raised by a nurse in the country. Jeanne was pregnant again when Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis, and reacted a couple of days later by throwing herself from a high window to meet her death.
posted by Pat on 10:19 PM |
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