Category: Arts

‘Rodin’ Shines As A Story Of Both Artist And Art : NPR

While many biographies of artists focus on their tortured personal lives, Rodin maintains a close focus on sculpture itself and what makes it last.

Deep into Rodin, Jacques Doillon’s quietly satisfying portrait of the famed French sculptor, a group of stuffy sponsors circles Auguste Rodin’s almost completed statue of France’s beloved novelist Honore de Balzac. Rodin (Vincent Lindon) has given the writer an enormous gut (he used a pregnant young woman and a draft horse rider as models for the belly), which the artist made capacious enough to house, in his imagination, the teeming characters who peopled the 19th-century writer’s stories. And, perhaps, his appetites.[ . . . ]

Continue at NPR: ‘Rodin’ Shines As A Story Of Both Artist And Art : NPR

Amadeo Modigliani lived hard, died young, and is on display in London 

The Jewish-Italian artist womanized, drank, and did drugs — and in his 35 years created an impressive oeuvre, now showing in a blockbuster exhibit at Tate Modern

Despite this, Modigliani’s output was considerable and his work is currently the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Modern, in London.

His major retrospective is the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the United Kingdom. With over 100 works, it brings together a range of his portraits, landscapes, sculptures and 12 of his iconic, languorous, female nudes, some of which have never been shown in the UK before.

These seductive figures, such as “Reclining Nude on a White Cushion” (1917), “Female Nude” (1916) and “Seated Nude” (1916) constitute many of his best-known works today. But in the early 20th century, the provocative paintings proved controversial, shocking the French establishment.

In 1917, they were included in Modigliani’s only solo exhibition in his lifetime, but were subject to censorship on grounds of indecency: A police commissioner objected to Modigliani’s depiction of pubic hair, finding it offensive [ . . . ]

Read full story at THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Amadeo Modigliani lived hard, died young, and is on display in London | The Times of Israel

Modigliani masterpiece on display at Ulster Museum

World famous painting goes on display after being loaned by the Courtauld Institute in London.

Female Nude, 1916′ by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani is on loan from the Courtauld Gallery, London.

When the painting was initially shown in Paris a century ago it created a scandal.

An exhibition containing it and a number of other Modigliani nudes was closed by the French police.

However, the reception for the masterpiece on its first day of public display in Belfast was much warmer.

“Of all the various nudes that he did, this is one of the most important,” one early viewer told BBC News NI.[ . . . ]

“There’s an immediacy and physicality” says senior curator Anne Stewart

Read Full Story at Source: Modigliani masterpiece on display at Ulster Museum – BBC News