On the Edge, with Sight Essay -- Art Paintings Artist Essays

On the Edge, with Sight I have kept for twenty years a tattered and stained copy of a Matt Groenig cartoon entitled â€Å"How to be an Artist in Torment.†The cartoon asks if you were sickly, peculiar, alienated, or picked on as a child and, if so, did that make you feel superior? Another cell catalogs the requisite psychological impediments of the creative personality—rage, confusion, and self- doubt—and describes the proper look to emulate: an â€Å"overall postpunk neobeatnik semidisheveled drab yet hip look.†The cartoon portrays the artist’s studio companions as lice and rats. Finally, it asks if you are thin and exhausted from staying up nights fretting over an idea, or in a related vein, â€Å"Can drugs really be considered art supplies?† What Groenig laughingly and lovingly describes is the romantic stereotype known in France as les peintres maudits, or â€Å"accursed painters.† It’s a syndrome, however, that extends easily to writers, musicians, and performers. Art historian Douglas Hall describes the four key attributes of the doomed creative genius: alienation, poverty, weakness, and brilliance—the latter being essential if one is not to pass into historical obscurity. The twentieth century is littered with such talented and troubled souls: Jim Morrison, Jackson Pollack, Dylan Thomas, Warhol, Judy Garland, and Van Gogh. Yet the uncontested high priest of the syndrome is Amedeo Modigliani. Modigliani was an expatriate Italian painter living in the bohemian quarters of Paris during the decades before and during World War I. Art historian Doris Krystof provides a tantalizing picture of Modigliani’s life in Paris: His few friends and many acquaintances called him â€Å"Modi,† which appears at first to be merely a shortening of his surname, ... ...tion at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Marsha Tackett December 7, 2002 References â€Å"Amedeo Modigliani† Olga’s Gallery [On-line]. 1 Nov 2002. Available: http://www.abcgallery.com/M/modigliani/modiglianibio.html â€Å"Amedeo Modigliani† WebMuseum, Paris [On-line]. 5 Nov 2002. Available: http://www.oir.ucf.edu/wm/paint/auth/modigliani Hall, D. (1990). Modigliani. New York:Watson-Guptill Krystof, D. (2000). Amedeo Modigliani: The Poetry of Seeing, Koln, Germany: Taschen. Kruszynski, A. (1998). â€Å"Amedeo Modigliani: Portrait of Paul Guillaume.† In L. Lumpkin (ed.), The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art: Impressionist and Modern Masters(pp. 91-98). Las Vegas: Mirage Resorts, Incorporated. Lucie-Smith, E. (n.d.). â€Å"Lives of the Great 20th-Centry Artists† (excerpt). The Artchive [On-line] 1 Nov 2002. Available: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/modigliani.html