Review: Modigliani, a Life–the author doesn’t get it. See the movie instead.
Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest
I often point out that motivations and lives of the subjects about whom biographers write can’t be understood without comprehending addiction. Modigliani provides yet more support for my assertion.
Secrest, who specializes in art-related biographies, thinks the artist Amedeo Modigliani’s public intoxication was mostly feigned and that he used drugs “medicinally,” as a “necessary anesthetic…to soothe his coughing fits” from his long-kept secret illness, tuberculosis. Yet, as described in Lance Esplund’s splendid review of the book in The Wall Street Journal, he insulted waiters, broke dishes and chairs, threw his mistress through a window and, when he was drunk, stripped nude in cafes and bars. He traded drawings for drinks and was a deadbeat ...
