Showing posts with label mannerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mannerism. Show all posts

21 May 2018

On the Art of the Long Neck 2: Modigliani's Neckrophilia

Modigliani: Portrait of Lunia Czechowska (1919)


I.

Almost 400 years after Parmigianino painted his Madonna with the Long Neck, another Italian artist was allowing cervical partialism to determine his subject matter and style. 

But whereas the former lengthened the neck of the Virgin because he was interested in exploring the possibilities of Mannerism, I suspect Modigliani's obsessive desire to erotically display and elongate the necks of his models in one canvas after another was rooted more in fetishism.  

Not that there's anything wrong with that ...

In fact, I can well understand the arousal derived from a lovely female neck; so elegant, so shapely, so vulnerable. This highly sensitive area of the body has what might be termed a special kind of nakedness and it's not just vampires tempted to bite them, nor only perverts who love to lace them with pearls.


II.

Like Parmigianino, Modigliani lived fast and died young. But the handsome Jewish bad boy of early-twentieth century art has left behind him a body of work (and a legend) that has captured huge public interest and affection (critical acclaim being somewhat more restrained and qualified). His star may not quite have risen to the heights of Van Gogh, but, nevertheless, a Modigliani nude sold at Sotheby's in New York earlier this month for $157 million and you can buy a lot of pasta for that!

Although remembered primarily as a painter, Modigliani really wanted to be a sculptor. But mostly, from the time he arrived in Paris in 1906, he wanted to lead as debauched a life as possible. For Modigliani, creativity was born of chaos and fuelled by sex, drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, in his case, these things only led to ruin (although it should be noted his premature death at 35 was due to tubercular meningitis rather than a bohemian lifestyle). 


III.

The following remark, made by the American art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, pretty much sums up my own position vis-à-vis Modigliani and his work:

"I recall my thrilled first exposure, as a teenager, to one of his long-necked women, with their piquantly tipped heads and mask-like faces. The rakish stylization and the succulent color were easy to enjoy, and the payoff was sanguinely erotic in a way that endorsed my personal wishes to be bold and tender and noble [...] In that moment, I used up Modigliani's value for my life. But in museums ever since I have been happy to salute his pictures with residually grateful, quick looks."


See: Peter Schjeldahl, 'Long Faces: Loving Modigliani', a review of Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), in The New Yorker (March 7, 2011): click here to read online. 

To read the sister post to this one on Parmigianino and his Madonna with the Long Neck, click here


On the Art of the Long Neck 1: Parmigianino's Mannerist Madonna

Parmigianino: Madonna dal collo lungo (1534-40) 
Oil on wood (216 x 132 cm)


Despite what some people mistakenly think, Parmigianino is not a type of Italian hard cheese grated over pasta dishes, or shaved on to salads. It's the name, rather, by which the progidiously talented 16th century painter and printmaker Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola was commonly known.

Like other artists who worked in the Mannerist style, his work is characterised by its artificiality, its elegance and its sensuous distortion of the human figure. This is clearly seen in his iconic (but unorthodox and unfinished) picture known in English as the Madonna with the Long Neck (1534-40).

The painting depicts Mary seated on a high pedestal in luxurious blue robes and surrounded by half-a-dozen angels who have gathered round to take a peek at the (oversized) baby Jesus lying awkwardly on her blessed lap.

In the lower right-hand corner of the picture is the figure of St. Jerome, the theologian and historian who translated the Bible into Latin and a passionate devotee of the Virgin. Whether he's tiny in size or simply far away I'll leave for others to decide, but Parmigianino is clearly playing with perspective in this work.  

The thing that immediately strikes most viewers, however, is the fact that Parmigianino has given Mary a swan-like neck in a bid to make her look graceful and perhaps relate her story to that of other figures within religious mythology. Her slender hands and long fingers also suggest a becoming-swan - either that, or the artist's model was suffering from the genetic condition known as Marfan Syndrome, which affects the connective tissue.  


Notes

The Madonna with the Long Neck can be seen in the Uffizi Gallery (Florence).

To read the sister post to this one on Amedeo Modigliani's erotico-aesthetic fascination with long female necks, click here.