Modigliani: A Life - Tapa dura

PRAISE FOR "IMPRESSIONIST QUARTET" "[Meyers] brilliantly interweaves complex issues of personal relationship, artistic creativity, critical reception, historical events, and widely divergent social and economic backgrounds. [He] remains a master of illuminating detail, but never sacrifices his quest for vivid personal and artistic characterization."--Marvin Eisenberg, professor emeritus of history of art, University of Michigan PRAISE FOR"IMPRESSIONIST QUARTET" "[Meyers] brilliantly interweaves complex issues of personal relationship, artistic creativity, critical reception, historical events, and widely divergent social and economic backgrounds. [He] remains a master of illuminating detail, but never sacrifices his quest for vivid personal and artistic characterization."--Marvin Eisenberg, professor emeritus of history of art, University of Michigan PRAISE FOR "IMPRESSIONIST QUARTET" "[Meyers] brilliantly interweaves complex issues of personal relationship, artistic creativity, critical reception, historical events, and widely divergent social and economic backgrounds. [He] remains a master of illuminating detail, but never sacrifices his quest for vivid personal and artistic characterization."--Marvin Eisenberg, professor emeritus of history of art, University of Michigan

In 1920, at the age of just 35, Amedeo Modigliani - serial lover, alcoholic, drug addict, and TB sufferer - died in squalor in Paris. His life had been as dramatic as his death. An Italian Jew from a bourgeois family, "Modi" had a weakness for drink, hashish, and the many women who were drawn to his good looks. Modigliani knew everyone yet refused to join any of the headline-grabbing movements, developing, instead, an intensely idiosyncratic vision that interested nearly no one. Meyers explicitly describes the squalor Modigliani fantastically endured, dispelling romantic notions about starving artists and starkly exposing a cruel paradox - the wretchedness of Modigliani's life versus the transcendent beauty of his art.