Meryle Secrest

by Modigliani: A Life

  an early profile: RE, no. 2.

  “sulky little face”: JM, p. 45.

  “cool purposefulness”: Alfred Werner, Modigliani the Sculptor, p. xv.

  “fairground stalls”: UM, p. 67.

  “elegantly stylized figurines”: SCH, p. 186.

  “magical objects”: RE, p. 24.

  the protective mask: PL, p. 251.

  “majesty and greatness”: Modigliani the Sculptor, pp. xxiv–xxv.

  “an endless whole”: Hugh Honour and John Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History, p. 567.

  He was looking: UM, p. 65.

  “It was characteristic”: SCH, p. 196.

  “Our enquiries”: SII interview.

  “I can see him”: Modigliani the Sculptor, p. xxiii.

  “affected me deeply”: Idem, p. xviii.

  “He seems very well”: Dated July 3, 1909.

  “one slash of the scissors”: JM, p. 48.

  “I don’t give a hoot”: Charles Douglas, Artist Quarter, p. 124.

  all expenses paid: Idem, p. 125.

  at Romiti’s atelier: PAR, p. 130.

  “a divine day”: UM, p. 95. On September 5, 1909.

  “like a ghost”: Aldo Santini, Maledetto dai Livornesi, p. 78.

  They had to be real: New York Times, July 26, 1984.

  The sculptures were “treasures”: BTM, p. 76.

  “It’s easy to be talented”: Idem.

  powerful preparatory sketches: UM, pp. 433–36.

  “the cool harmonies”: JM, p. 49.

  Cézanne’s influence: SCH, p. 38.

  “a costumed servant”: Vanni Scheiwiller, ed., Modigliani vivo, testimonianze inedite e rare, pp. 139–46.

  “a legendary beauty”: New York Times, March 19, 2006.

  “a sort of gloom”: Ronald Meyer, trans., Anna Akhmatova: My Half-Century, p. 77.

  soft, relentless shower: Juliet Nicolson, The Perfect Summer, p. 183.

  “the knock of his mallet”: Anna Akhmatova, p. 77.

  Laure was appalled: JM, p. 50.

  “He went out, reeling”: Stanley Kunitz, trans., Poems of Anna Akhmatova, p. 43.

  “the tragic consequences”: Anna Akhmatova, pp. 76–83.

  “For several years”: Modigliani the Sculptor, p. xxiii.

  a curious motif: RE, p. 27.

  the Endless Column: Pontus Hulten, Brancusi, p. 20.

  “Was Modigliani the originator”: RE, p. 27.

  “a frightened child”: SII, interview.

  a sacred space: Modigliani the Sculptor, p. xii.

  CHAPTER EIGHT · “WHAT I AM SEARCHING FOR”

  Alexandre bought a balustrade: UM, p. 43.

  “large red figures”: Idem, pp. 43–44.

  “had a wide entrance”: André Salmon, Modigliani, A Memoir, p. 129.

  “a flimsy affair”: Abel Warshawsky, Adventures with Colors and Brush, manuscript, Archives of American Art, p. III.

  “the last great expansion”: Patrick Marnham, Dreaming with His Eyes Open, p. 87.

  “Venir au café”: Idem; they could spend hours: Idem, p. 88.

  the nearby ateliers: Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan, The Circle of Montparnasse, p. 69.

  “—after death of course”: Written on May 18, 1910.

  the flood spared Montparnasse: Adventures with Colors and Brush, p. xxxxi.

  fed in soup kitchens: Nigel Gosling, The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900–1914, p. 161.

  “the human character”: Michael Holroyd, Augustus John, p. 349.

  “considerable courage”: Adventures with Colors and Brush, p. xxv.

  a great joke: Artist Quarter, p. 50.

  “smells of death”: CR, p. 157.

  unanswered letters: The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900–1914, p. 162.

  “any mythological means”: Meryle Secrest, Salvador Dalí, p. 124.

  “boredom and poverty”: SE, pp. 342–43; “endings of generations”: p. 343.

  “Beauty must be a good”: Adam Kirsch, New Yorker, July 14 2008, p. 94.

  years as a sculptor: UM, p. 106.

  “Only Cardoso’s”: JM, p. 58.

  around the room: June Rose, Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, pp. 91–92.

  paid in installments: Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso, p. 59.

  three willing subjects: Sisley Huddleston, Back to Montparnasse, p. 58.

  “drawing ceaselessly”: PAR, p. 270.

  “His working method”: Conrad Moricand, Quand le diable l’importe, souvenirs 1888–1935, manuscript, p. 100.

  “I can see him”: SCH, p. 204.

  “I only own one”: Cocteau, Modigliani, no pagination.

  it was finally sold: Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau, p. 150 note.

  “a colour photograph”: Jeanine Warnod, La Ruche and Montparnasse, p. 84.

  “At that period”: A Memoir, Modigliani, André Salmon, p. 129.

  “[H]e loved women”: Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 86.

  “all charm”: Marevna, Life with the Painters of La Ruche, p. 18.

  “So little did he value”: Artist Quarter, p. 197.

  Her husband collapses: Idem.

  considered himself a Socialist: Life with the Painters of La Ruche, p. 18.

  “There shines upon”: Francis Carco, The Last Bohemia, p. 121.

  in a gutter: Robert Coughlan, The Wine of Genius, pp. 45–46.

  “Take the painters”: SCH, p. 193.

  acutely uncomfortable: Artist Quarter, p. 89.

  “a diseased liver”: Life with the Painters of La Ruche, p. 17.

  salvaged from the Women’s Pavilion: The Circle of Montparnasse, p. 25.

  “His clothes”: Life with the Painters of La Ruche, p. 19.

  “He is small”: Diary of an Art Dealer, René Gimpel, pp. 309–310.

  sensitive, introspective: Restellini catalog.

  “He gave me confidence”: SCH, p. 201.

  exhibition amply demonstrated: “Soutine,” Pinacothèque de Paris, 10 October 2007–27 January 2008, curated by Marc Restellini.

  “Everything dances”: SII, p. 231.

  “poetic beauty”: The Circle of Montparnasse, p. 31.

  “Greco-Roman”: BTM, p. 86.

  berating a group of Royalists: Artist Quarter, p. 88.

  wearing a beard: UM, p. 92.

  “I carry no religion”: Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 132.

  endless discussions: C. R. W. Nevinson, Paint and Prejudice, p. 53.

  prophesies of Nostradamus: PAR, p. 258.

  “Like all Italians”: Modigliani vivo, testimonianze inedite e rare, pp. 63–68.

  He could have stumbled” C. G. Jung, Collected Works, vol. VIII, p. 427.

  “a vulgar fantasy”: PAR, p. 81.

  “Table-turning”: UM, pp. 120–21.

  “he was a medium”: Artist Quarter, p. 227.

  “in open rebellion”: UM, p. 91.

  “the mind of the Lord”: RE, p. 22.

  “the secret truth”: Idem; “an extremely radical philosophical conception”: Idem.

  “Jean was nursed”: UM, p. 82.

  unconscious beside a block: Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 90; he took up a collection: Idem.

  spitting up blood: Artist Quarter, p. 203.

  “[H]e looked up”: PLU, p. 206.

  CHAPTER NINE · MALDOROR

  not given a drawing: Aldo Santini, Maledetto dai Livornesi, pp. 8–9.

  rampant head lice: SII, p. 214.

  a single head: UM, p. 104.

  “a sane health”: Artist Quarter, p. 124.

  “dazzling light”: letter dated April 23, 1913; UM, p. 104.

  phase of sculpture ending: UM, p. 106.

  “an angel with a grave face”: UM, p. 109.

  Jean Alexandre died: June 8, 1913.

  “Just as the snake”: UM, p. 92.

  unique and universal: UM, p. 93.

  “the Red Elixir”: UM, p. 92; resurrection after death: Idem; “Aour!”: Idem; “the Great Work”: Idem.
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  “when I am consumed”: PLU, p. 70.

  “disguised as a workman”: SI, p. 222.

  “a wild but frozen sea”: SI, p. 221.

  “like so many white horses”: SCH, p. 205.

  “one would have thought”: SI, p. 221.

  as if he had drowned: SI, idem.

  “Zadkine, at this period”: Artist Quarter, p. 209.

  “His only response”: SI, p. 222.

  “a loan of three francs”: SI, p. 221.

  “the heroic period”: Meyer Schapiro, Modern Art, p. 138; “About 1913”: Idem.

  “the most remarkable”: The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists, p. 98.

  no Modigliani heads: BTM, p. 96.

  “Little by little”: SI, p. 233.

  “bathing in the dirt”: SCH, p. 205.

  a sculpted stone head: Associated Press, June 14, 2010.

  “There is in the corridor”: SCH, p. 189.

  “At that time”: Fernande Olivier, Loving Picasso, p. 195.

  a bowl of macaroni: Artist Quarter, p. 85.

  “reduces her face”: RE, p. 63.

  Picasso as a visionary: RE, p. 210.

  “an ironic comment”: RE, p. 72.

  he would always reply: SI, p. 220.

  the two would never meet: SII, interview.

  “I’m a Jew”: HOM, p. 14.

  the urge to obliterate: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 3, p. 74.

  “like an old monkey”: Kenneth Clark, The Other Half, pp. 71–72.

  the terrible shadow: PAR, p. 47.

  the leading cause of death: David S. Barnes, The Making of a Social Disease, p. 13.

  “a national scourge”: Idem.

  “Fleeing to the countryside”: Idem, p. 92.

  “îlots insalubres”: Colin Jones, Paris, Biography of a City, p. 417.

  Everyone else’s health was at risk: The Making of a Social Disease, p. 105; fumes from hot tar: Idem, p. 99.

  “a fawn coloured mixture”: PLU, p. 107.

  “It’s very strange”: Adolphe Basler, Modigliani, p. 12.

  “a perfect nuisance”: Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso, p. 49.

  “He was the scourge”: SCH, p. 185.

  “I’m done for!”: Artist Quarter, p. 203.

  “emotional and intellectual”: René and Jean Dubos, The White Plague, p. 61; his mind was “beating”: Idem; “a butterfly within”: Idem, p. 62; “a wonderful Indian”: Idem, p. 61.

  “artistic expression”: Idem, p. 63.

  also contained a dining room: SI, p. 239.

  “a paid worker”: PAR, p. 291.

  “the arcane depths”: A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, p. 203.

  “a neighborhood dominated”: RE, p. 169.

  curtly said he did not: Artist Quarter, p. 200.

  he did paint “a bit”: June Rose, Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 113.

  “Because he was very poor”: Paul Guillaume, Les Arts à Paris, November 1920, no pagination.

  “crazily irritable”: Artist Quarter, p. 201.

  “depression or indolence”: PLU, p. 129; “always in extreme”: Idem, p. 241.

  “Shackled and oppressed”: Sheila M. Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death, p. 30.

  “point of delirium”: SI, p. 200.

  “furious and unexpected”: Rémy de Gourmont, quoted in Dalí catalog, Philadelphia Museum of Art, February–May 2005, p. 211.

  “a demonic figure”: Ronald Meyer, ed., Anna Akhmatova: My Half-Century, p. 366.

  “extraordinary intuition”: MAL, p. 6; “a pale complexion”: Idem, pp. 268–69.

  “Here lies a youth”: MAL, p. 33.

  “fits of sleeplessness”: MAL, pp. 63–64; “who seemed not”: Idem, p. 76.

  “a breathing corpse”: Idem, p. 169.

  saved from death by Magnelli: Modigliani vivo, testimonianze inedite e rare, pp. 103–05.

  CHAPTER TEN · BEATRICE

  He might be “a pearl”: SI, p. 267.

  first meeting with Modigliani: She wrote on September 17, 1936.

  He was “fishing”: MP, “On the Boulevard Edgar Quinet,” p. 207.

  They met again: NA, June 14, 1914.

  listening in amazement: Ambrogio Ceroni, “Les Souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska,” Amedeo Modigliani, Peintre, p. 21.

  jealous and possessive: BAR, p. 208.

  “a long tunnel”: As quoted in Nigel Gosling, The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900–1914, p. 230; the last civilian train: Idem, p. 231.

  Parisian males would be conscripted: Colin Jones, Paris, Biography of a City, p. 435.

  “two rooms and real running water”: GRA, p. 276; “never to begin”: Idem.

  “surrounded by a gang”: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 2, p. 368.

  “Much laughter”: NA, May 28, 1914.

  shot the editor: The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900–1914, p. 221.

  “[t]he romantic world”: NA, June 18, 1914.

  “No wonder he is”: NA, July 9, 1914.

  “he abducted her”: SCH, p. 189.

  “wicked genius”: Idem, p. 194.

  Guillaume’s contradictory testimony: Les Arts à Paris, November 1920, no pagination.

  “it isn’t all gay”: NA, June 11, 1914.

  “don’t go!’ ”: NA, July 16, 1914.

  “Women should have”: GRA, p. 296.

  “realising their own images”: Kenneth Clark, The Other Half, p. 72.

  “He was thus a target”: Marta Petricioli and Donatella Cherubini, eds., Pour la Paix en Europe, p. 310; “[W]e are witnessing”: Idem.

  a matter of days: GRA, p. 289.

  “Many artisans’ shops”: Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 435–39.

  “I managed to change”: GRA, p. 296; “there isn’t a quarter”: Idem, p. 297; “This morning very little”: GRA, p. 298.

  “People vanish”: GRA, p. 301; “The first effect”: Idem, p. 302.

  “all over the corridors”: Idem, p. 302; “lost each other”: Idem, p. 305.

  “we are saved!”: NA, September 10, 1914.

  “all wet and muddy”: GRA, p. 300; “sandwiches and cigarettes”: Idem, p. 308.

  “I routed out”: NA, February 11, 1915.

  “a state of culture”: Idem.

  Poiret began buying: WAY, pp. 176–77.

  “the broken and choppy”: Flavio Fergonzi, The Mattioli Collection, p. 260.

  “My regiment was”: UM, p. 47.

  lost an arm: Life with the Painters of La Ruche, p. 55.

  briefly mobilized: Colette Giraudon, Paul Guillaume et les peintres du XXe siècle, p. 29.

  “The wartime lack”: Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan, The Circle of Montparnasse, p. 36.

  “Just about every Montparnassian”: SCH, p. 186.

  “Where else could we go?”: Marevna, Life with the Painters of La Ruche, pp. 36–37.

  “old and short and solid”: Frederick S. Wight, “Recollections of Modigliani by Those who Knew Him,” Italian Quarterly, 1958, p. 41.

  “with odds and ends”: Billy Klüver and Julie Martin, Kiki’s Paris, p. 71.

  a “tiny, bandy-legged”: Life with the Painters of La Ruche, pp. 60–61.

  Quatz’ Arts ball: GRA, pp. 311–12; André Salmon, Modigliani: A Memoir, pp. 266–74.

  basket of ducklings: GRA, p. 313.

  “I look with interest”: Kiki’s Paris, p. 222.

  slumming it: The Circle of Montparnasse, p. 74.

  Kisling gave advice: TRIB, February 17, 1964.

  “at least ten thousand”: Idem.

  a small fortune: KIS, p. 86.

  five servants and own two American cars: Interview with Jean Kisling.

  a very bad painter: René Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer, p. 349.

  “[t]he axis around which”: Kiki’s Paris, p. 162; “How was I able”: Idem, p. 236.

  “I want life to be beautiful”: Kiki’s Paris, p. 236.

  “I’m marrying the daughter”: SI, p. 386.

  “He rush
ed to…‘My bridal linen!’ ”: SCH, p. 200.

  out of the gutter: KIS, pp. 105–07.

  It was all too sad: NA, November 12, 1914; a few Zeppelins. Idem.

  “Virgin Mary”: NA, November 5, 1914.

  “formal grace”: SCH, p. 31; “series of major portraits”: Idem, p. 34.

  time to bury him: NA, November 5, 1914.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN · “A STONY SILENCE”

  “only the fittest”: NA, December 17, 1914.

  “until stray visitors”: NA, December 24, 1914.

  brown and gloomy: NA, February 4, 1915.

  “flags and flowers”: NA, May 6, 1915.

  “almost photographic”: NA, January 28, 1915.

  “the more dogmatic”: John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 2, p. 374.

  “an old Catalan peasant”: Idem.

  “the most unpleasant”: June Rose, Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 130.

  “shut all shutters”: NA, January 28, 1915; “Nearly everyone”: Idem.

  “Both love and work”: NA, December 19, 1916.

  “half the population”: NA, May 20, 1915.

  “Will he flower?”: Modigliani, the Pure Bohemian, p. 128.

  “As to Laure”: Idem, p. 129.

  “She, poor girl”: PAR, p. 44.

  “a craving, violent”: Madame Six, GRA, p. 343.

  “ ‘while the vogue lasts’ ”: GRA, p. 340.

  “securing my peace”: GRA, p. 346.

  “little psychic consequence”: NA, January 7, 1915.

  “A figure cut out of”: Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris, pp. 229–30.

  “cadaverous body”: René and Jean Dubos, The White Plague, pp. 56–57.

  strange additional charm: Idem, p. 55.

  hoped he would die of consumption: Idem, p. 53.

  “a life so brief”: Idem, p. 53.

  “glimpsing his mistress”: Artist Quarter, p. 97.

  “severely afflicted”: The White Plague, p. 58.

  “an indefinable expression”: Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, p. 42.

  “It is possible … to ask”: SCH, p. 33.

  “immaculately dressed”: SCH, p. 197.

  “For the masks were”: The Italian Comedy, p. 42.

  “Secrecy [was]”: PL, p. 139.

  “Not every family”: PL, p. 678 note.

  “crystalline purity”: SCH, p. 195.

  “his drawing developed”: Agnes Mongan, Modigliani—Drawings from the Collection of Stefa and Léon Brillouin, Fogg Art Museum, 1959, pp. 7–12.

  “The figures are”: Frederick S. Wight, Modigliani Paintings and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, p. 18; “Cézanne’s whittling”: Idem, p. 16.