This morning Noreen and I went to Tate Modern. Despite living in London, I’d not been there before and it is even more vast than I had expected, to the extent that they seem to have far more space than they really know what to do with. This is good as it means all the circulation areas are wide and accommodating; there are loos on every floor and several cafes and shops. The use of glass makes the space feel open, even on the dullest of January days, although I felt there was too much use of black/very dark colours in the public areas.
We went specifically to see the Modigliani exhibition. It is an absolute delight! For an artist who died at just 35 he produced a stunning array of paintings and sculpture – effectively all of which is portraiture (there is just one small landscape). In eleven rooms the exhibition takes you sequentially through Modigliani’s life in Paris from 1906 to his death in 1920. This means you see the interesting development of his style, from drawings and small, rather sombre, paintings to the larger portraits for which he is perhaps best known.
These later, larger portraits are especially delightful. The exhibition shows as many male portraits as female ones, although the only nudes are female: largely because Modigliani was painting for a male audience (photographic erotica then being largely still in the realm of the B&W postcard). The paint in these later works is especially luminous and bright, something which shines especially well on flesh tones. This helps make the female nudes particularly gorgeous and erotic – the nude paintings in Modigliani’s only solo exhibition, in Paris in 1917, were removed because the local police chief thought the displays of pubic hair to be obscene.
What I had not expected was a room of Modigliani’s sculpture. I wasn’t aware that he did any sculpture! Given that he knew Brancusi well, one should not be surprised that the sculptures in the show, all of which are life-size or slightly larger portrait heads, are very much influenced by Brancusi. Many of the heads are sharp and elongated in the way that many of Modigliani’s later portraits are – as Noreen observed, they explain the style of the later paintings which are almost paintings of sculpture.
There is also the obligatory short film, which shows scenes from Paris of the period, including some of Modigliani with Picasso and Brancusi. I would have appreciated this much more had it not been so jerky that it was doing my head in – that is partly the down to the film technology of the day, but wasn’t helped by being projected on too large a screen for the viewing distance. There was also a VR experience, which we declined.
Despite missing a couple of Modigliani’s best known female nudes, this is a great exhibition, which, having brought together works from around the world, has taken a huge amount of work and money to put on. It is well worth seeing, especially if, as we did, you can get tickets for a quieter time. The exhibition runs until 2 April.
Overall Rating: ★★★★★