BECOMING MODIGLIANI

Colt paints a multidimensional portrait of an Italian master.

The author is a doctor, a scholar, and, as he writes in the preface, an art lover. All these facets come into play in this fascinating work in which Colt examines the life of Amedeo Modigliani through the lenses of the artist’s tuberculosis and other ailments, his struggles with alcoholism, and other factors that contributed to his bad-boy reputation. Colt aims to provide a “critical view of the interplay between his illnesses, his environment, and the social fabric of early twentieth-century Paris.” The book opens like a standard biography, juxtaposing Modigliani’s birth in Italy in 1884 with the rise of the bohemian culture that would flourish in Paris. As a child, he fought pleurisy and, later, typhoid fever, which he was diagnosed with soon after picking up drawing. Full immersion in the art world occurred after he recovered, and the text faithfully follows the young Modigliani from Florence to Venice to Paris, scrupulously charting the progress of the artist, who would die at age 35 and become known as a master. Along the way, Modigliani developed tuberculosis. Colt devotes five chapters to describing the disease (Modigliani survived, but the illness was a precursor to future demons, including drug and alcohol abuse and womanizing). This is material that, in a lesser writer’s hands, could feel like slogging through the mud; here, it is compelling fare from start to finish. The author’s background in medicine is evident throughout the narrative, but the medical lessons never get in the way—they add a dimension to Modigliani’s story that’s not always present in other books about him. Colt is an engaging writer who successfully penetrates the surface of his subject’s story—which, despite the author’s meticulous thoroughness, remains eminently readable. The book is exhaustive, though not exhausting, and stands as a definitive work about a complicated and remarkable artist who was “young, handsome, absurdly talented, charismatic, resilient…and troubled.”

A penetrating biography of one of history’s most acclaimed artists.