November 23, 2002
Modigliani and Buffalo's artistic vibrancy
by William Sylvester
Jean and I visited "Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse" at the Albright Knox three times, a trulyremarkable exhibit that represents a deep change in the history of art appreciation generally, and has a resonance with Buffalo’s history in particular.
I remember that in 1937-38 in Paris, people spoke about Modigliani with amused delight by AT? his composing such elongated necks, and pointed faces, as if some barrier had been tipped over—like the first time you set out to stay up all night.
Today Modigliani’s gorgeous coloring evokes an immediate and total sense of beauty. In fact we saw a live Modigliani in the Garden Restaurant on the ground floor.
"You're as beautiful as a Modigliani," I said.
The young woman did not reach for her neck, but took the compliment for granted, smiled with delight and thanked us, including Jean and Mabel—wife and sister-in law.
I mentioned this incident to Elizabeth Ross, who said "Oh yes, we know her, her name is Barbara." So there was Barbara (if that is her right name) in front of us, and upstairs there were the Modiglianis. People don’t have any problem connecting the “abstraction” of art to the “objectivity” OBJECTIVE FACT? of “real” people.
The logo of the exhibit, a young woman with the '20's style curls on her forehead, almost spit curls, "looked" like a worker, many people noticed. Her heavy hands, and like those others, some with black shawls drawn tightly around them, the "short necks" as distinguished from the elegant "long necks." I did hear a few people wish that he had done "regular portraits." But they forgave him for his sense of color.
And even the young artist from Toronto, Sandor Eisenstat approved heartily, although his own work is quite different, and consists of machine or computer driven artifacts in motion. He said I should think of a bus where the window wipers were out of synch. That sense of motion is the art. Painting, he felt was no longer in the mainstream.
But to judge by anecdotal evidence, everybody I talked to loved the exhibit, although some had a grudging reservation “I love the color, but then I like a real portrait better.”
Buffalo has a long history of make peace with conflicting interests in art.
Consider, for example, the conflict between the amateur and professional in Buffalo’s architecture.
The "familiar" in Buffalo sometimes involves a conflict of authority between the amateur and professional. Familiar old homes in Buffalo—I am thinking of Richmond in particular—have patterns that keep reappearing, turrets, or a group of three small narrow rectangular windows—isolated patterns in odd permutations. In short, the professional architect was bypassed completely by the house owner or the builder, who selected ready made parts from suppliers CATLOGS—an early version of “modules”. These items seem to have been selected for the way they’d look from the outside without a conscious relationship to the inner space.
We also have the architect as tyrant—one who insisted upon being in charge of the chairs, tables, curtains, and windows, the super-professional Frank Lloyd Wright—we have five of them. We cherish the traditional [Dana Tillou] but like to edge into the future [Nina Freudenhiem]. We have chamber music and Ani di Franco, and if we go abroad we find Buffalo represented by Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and many others.
The Modigliani is a celebration of Buffalo’s artistic vibrancy and complexity.
Vibrancy? What vibrancy?
by Bill Sylvester
William’s vaguely effusive sentimentality about the over-hyped Modigliani show contained one central truth, which he seems to have misunderstood. The young man from Toronto, Sandor Eisenstat, said that painting is no longer in the main stream.
What an understatement!
Creativity has moved away from painting, an art of palaces, or the corporate board room in the case of abstract expressionists, and flourishes elsewhere.
The notion of a bus where two windshield wipers are working at different speeds is of course overly simplified, but that sense of difference in motion, of differential is a powerfully emotive one, and can be found in Dante.
In our day it appears most effectively and persistently in the movies, our central art. Painting has been moribund for a long time. The Albright Knox has put the “Mirrored Room” into storage for a while. This cube of mirrors that people can enter and see themselves reflected indefinitely, attracted so many people they had to stand in line to get in. (So maybe they put it away to cut down the competition with paintings.)
Even an artist who gets classified as a painter, such as Robert Longo, often is recognized as much by the shape and material of the work as the coloring. List the non painters—Segal, Oldenburg, Cornell, Nevelson, Marisol, Eva Hesse..add to that list all the “installations”—a repetitive pattern of mouse shaped objects all around the room, or stacks of metal on the floor–-pretty soon the abstract expressionists begin to seem quaint. An up-to-date modern art show at the New Tate in London—a show the size of a several football fields-- did not have a single painting in it.
The Modigliani exhibit is a moving celebration of the past, a heartfelt tribute to the way things were and will never be again, a colorful wake.
And public works in Buffalo?
One aesthetic catastrophe after another.
Vibrancy?
Is that word really in the dictionary?
The Modigliani exhibit at the Albright Knox is up through January 12, 2003. Click on this line for more information.