About 25 years ago, I was sat before famed photographer, Konstantin. Konstantin had his studio on 57th Street, just opposite Carnegie Hall where I was then studying with Stephen Citron. Konstantin was a popular photographer with performers in need of a reliable headshot, including some of the headshots used in "A Chorus Line". This was in the days before digital photography where the craft of the photographer relied primarily on lighting. I approached Konstantin with the idea of instead of doing a traditional (Am I My Resume?) happy-go-lucky headshot, I would recreate several classic paintings by Modigliani, Picasso and Erich Heckel.
A good photographer must sometimes be a great therapist. Konstantine was known for his insight, and ability to put people at ease. I recall him telling me how lucky I was” thatI knew my face, and what it could do, and what it could become.”
I was not not a Tuesday's child "fair of face". I was a Thursday's child " with far to go". I was not born attractive. This is not me being self-deprecatory, or fishing for a compliment. My face would not be my entrée in the world of performing arts. I had only a little bit of talent, which carried me but so far. Casting Directors knew me well, liked me, and often would tell me that I read better than anyone else did, but that I was not what they were “looking” for, (emphasis on “looking”). To combat the physical hurdles of what constitutes beauty, (aka leading man material) I opted to demonstrate that some of the world’s most beautiful canvases were of “common” or “average” looking souls, just like me. This created a reputation for me in the industry as being brilliant at marketing, but still not employable as a performer. Later in my career, if you could call it that, after all I seldom made a livelihood, I expanded the roster of portraits I duplicated to include Vermeer , Singer, Sergeant and Klimt. Directors loved my photos, but cast blonde haired blue-eyed actors in the lead.
Now some 25 years later I have removed these images from my portfolio, and attempt to re-investigate what the paintings convey. Art is sometimes unconscious. As a young man, with my life ahead of me I was drawn to these canvases, but never clear why. In reevaluating something I shared an affinity with half a lifetime ago I have learned a lot about myself.
(“Chaim Soutine”, 1917 Amedeo Modigliani)
Modigliani’s life and work were well known to me. I was often described as Modiglianish because of my moon shaped oval head, and bullet green eyes. I adore Modigliani. I wish he were alive to paint me.
Chaim Soutine fleeing the pogroms of eastern Europe came to Paris in 1913, where he lived modestly among a circle of other Jewish émigré artists, such as Chagall, Lipchitz, and Kisling, in La Ruche, a residence for struggling artists in Montparnasse, where is where he became friends with Amedeo Modigliani. So poor were the artists that it is no wonder that Sortine periodically sat for Modigliani. Such is the relationships between artists.
While not as well known a painter, Soutine found his own personal expressive style of painting in 1918, (not dissimilar to Modigliani, Munch and a little bit of Van Gogh thrown into the mix.
Modigliani is supposed to have said to Soutine, “Cezanne’s figures, like most beautiful statues of antiquity, do not see. Mine, in contrast, do. They see even if I have not drawn their pupils. But like Cezanne's figures, they want to express nothing but a mute affirmation of life." If I were to have an epitaph, this might be it. I wanted to express nothing, but my affirmation of life.
This particular painting shows a man in an elegant pose, his head cocked to one side, indicating that contemplation is occurring, or that he is weary, perhaps exhausted. His tie is loosely knotted suggesting a kind of casual relaxation. His legs are crossed. His hand is in his pocket, and the other draped over the side of a table. This creates a silhouette that is almost serpentine. The expression on Soutine’s face is intense, his lips are pursed, almost feminine, and there are dark circles underneath his eyes, which tell us that not all is what it appears to be, the eyes speak to us of toil, a depth of spirit, and a profound desire to communicate. I re-made the jacket I wore in the photograph, croping it short, which is something that artists like Cindi Lauper and Madonna were doing. I wore it everywhere.
Modigliani painted Soutine's portrait several times, most famously in 1917, on a door of an apartment belonging to Léopold Zborowski, who was their art dealer. Zborowski supported Soutine through World War 1, taking the struggling artist with him to Nice to escape the German bombing of Paris.
Soutine produced the majority of his works from 1920 to 1929. He seldom showed his works, but he did take part in an important exhibition “The Origins and Development of International Independent Art” held at “the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume” in 1937, in Paris, where he was at last hailed as a great painter. It was to be a short-lived career.
When World War Two erupted, France was invaded by German troops. As a Jew, Soutine had to escape from the French capital, and hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. Soutine was called up for deportation (aka the Death Camps) Sortine moved from one place to another, and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in winter forests, and to sleep outdoors. Already suffering from a stomach ulcer, and bleeding badly, he left a safe hiding place for Paris in order to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On August 9, 1943, Chaim Soutine died of a perforated ulcer. Soutine was interred in Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. In a strange twist of fate, about the time I sat for this portrait, I too suffered from gastro-intestinal illness, and had a perforated ulcer. I too was rushed into surgery. I only make this odd connection some 25 years later. Soutine a compatriot?
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent. Modigliani self-medicated to manage the pain, unfortunately the alcohol speed up his illness. In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, a downstairs neighbor checked on the family, and found Modigliani in bed delirious, and holding onto Hébuterne (his wife) who was nearly nine months pregnant. A doctor was summoned, but little could be done because Modigliani was dying of the then-incurable disease of tubercular meningitis. Modigliani died on January 24, 1920.
There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse. The morose Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930, that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads, “Struck down by death at the moment of glory.” Hers reads: "Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice."
Modigliani died penniless and destitute, managing only one solo exhibition in his life, and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants. Since his death, his reputation has soared. Today he would be astounded by his recognition.
(“Garcon a la Pipe” or “Boy with a Pipe” AKA Boy With Roses, 1905, Pablo Picasso) Picasso painted “Garcon a la Pipe” when he was 24. Like Picasso’s subject, I too was a working boy. The painting depicts a young Parisian working boy crowned with a garland of roses, mysteriously holding a pipe in his left hand. There is this haunting ambiguity about it. Upon reflection, the ambiguity may be what initially attracted me. It is, without question, one of the most beautiful of the artist's Rose Period paintings, and one of the most important early works by Pablo Picasso. A Rose Period icon, less dour, more celebratory than the master’s dolorous Blue Period works. While Picasso had achieved some fame, respect and notoriety, he had not sold many canvases. I too was in my mid- twenties, I was always working, but had not solidified my career. In 1905, Picasso did a series of sketches, “Hommes assis et mains, étude” (or “Study of Seated Men and Hands“), which Sotheby’s described in an auction catalogue as studies done in advance of Picasso’s 1905, “Boy with a Pipe”. The model for the work has sometimes been identified as an actor. Indeed, Picasso had surrounded himself with actors, dancers and carnival workers. He immortalized them often in his canvases. It seems more likely that the subject was an adolescent known as ‘p’tit Louis,’ (little Louis) named after his father, a common lineage practice. I too was named for my father. A custom I deplored. I did not want to be a mere extension of my father. I wanted to have my own identity. More likely p’tit Louis was an apprentice, who was frequently to be found in Picasso’s Montmarte studio. Louis, according to Picasso, was a frequent habitué of his studio, “He stayed there, sometimes the whole day. He watched me work. He loved that!” Coincidentally, I too aligned myself with talented mentors and shadowed them as long as they could tolerate me. This is how I learned. I loved it! The French art critic, André Salmon, explained it, “Picasso had painted, without a model, the purest and simplest image of a young Parisian working boy, beardless and in blue overalls: having indeed, more or less the same appearance as the artist himself during working hours. One night, Picasso abandoned the company of his friends and their intellectual chitchat. (They were debating poetry) He returned to his studio, took the canvas he had abandoned a month before and crowned the figure of the little apprentice lad with roses. He had made this work a masterpiece thanks to a sublime whim.” Something magical happened to the unfinished work, which had sat for two months. Picasso, not only added the laureate garland of roses to the boy’s head, suggesting some sort of romantic grandiosity, but he also painted two dreamy rose bouquets on the wall behind the sitter, appearing almost like a dream, flourishes reminiscent of Odilon Redon’s late portraits. The lesser known Redon’s works were, and remain one of my favorites. The evening’s chatter about poetry is thought to have been the impetuous for the dramatic transformation of the canvas. This is why artists should hang out with poets, and not bankers. Louis is wearing denim, a fabric indigenious to France. The word "denim" comes from the name of a sturdy fabric called serge originally made in Nîmes, France, by the Andre family. Originally called "serge de Nîmes", the name was soon shortened to denim. Again I took of the collar on my shirt to make a banded collar like Louis wears, I dyed the shirt to match denin jeans, process that took three days to perfect. My garland of roses were silk, which I purchased at at 69 Cent Store (the precurcessor to Dollar Stores). Legendary art critic, Meyer Schapiro, provides a lucid description of Picasso's new style in an essay in his seminal volume “Modern Art: 19th & 20th Centuries”, “What is called the ‘Rose Period’ includes many paintings with a pronounced blue, or with strong chords of blue, and rose, or with cool, or finely neutralized red, just as the faces and even the bodies retain something of the earlier tristesse. But the trend is unmistakably towards the overcoming of the pathos of those works through a happier imagery of beauty, strength, agility and daring, in which even a large mass of blue acquires a more cheerful aspect through its context and the contrasts with neighboring tones.”
(“Portrait Of A Man” aka “Self-Portrait” 1919, Erich Heckel)
Erich Heckel was a German painter, printmaker, and a founding member of The Die Brücke Group ("The Bridge") which existed between 1905 and 1913. Together with colleagues Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, they became influential artists. Like most members of Die Brücke, Heckel was especially prolific with over 1000 prints, 465 woodcuts, 400 lithographs and 375 etchings, as described in the Dube Catalogues Raisonné , with over 200 etchings dating to the last seven years of his life.
Heckel was a perennial “outsider”, strangely how I thought of myself, not understood, unable to gain acceptance.
The Die Brucke Group lived the idea of rebelling against the middle class by moving in together into the suburb of Dresden, with the working class, where they set up a studio in an abandoned butcher’s shop. (The idea of a commune or self-selected community still fascinates me.) Erich Heckel was a pragmatic soul, and imposed himself as the group’s organizer. (Anal retentive and sensitive to other’s needs, I too was often selected as the leader.) Like the rest of The Brucke Group, Heckel was proficient and most acclaimed in the wood carving technique, which historically displays a radical flatness and simplification of form. The four founding members made much use of the print as an inexpensive and quick medium, with which to produce affordable art for the masses. The reductive art form was also perfect for illustrating books, which provided Heckel and Die Brucke with a steady stream of income. Illustrated books were a burgeoning business.
As a former bookseller, and collector I cannot pass up the opportunity to look at old illustrated books. It’s nearly an addiction. As a high school student in the 1970’s one of my greatest pleases was to go the Newark Public Library were the head custodian would let me turn the pages of an rare illustrated text by Alphonse Mucha in the glass cases each week. I would be surprised and delighted to see what was under the next page. Each page seemed to be progressively more exciting. I remember slipping on white cotton gloves which seemed to me a 15 year old a terribly elegant way to read. My favorite day was the day I turned the page to reveal a powder blue hare, which seemed more poetic and a poem by Lord Byron.
Amongst my many interests was printmaking, while still in high school I turned out a series of Linoleum, wood carved prints and even took up metal etching and embossing. I collected old newspaper copper plates and letterpresses. Assuredly, that is what drew me to Heckel’s work, which I had seen at MoMA (Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art)
Since the Die Brucke Group reintroduced the lost craft of woodcarving, it is no wonder that they carved their manifest on a tree. The manifesto points out the significance of emotional experience as a test of moral and artistic values. Drawing inspiration from art by Van Gogh, Gaugin, Munch, as well as Durer, Grunewald and other old school artists, they created an art expression recognizable with its vivid colors, absence of perspective in its traditional sense, and simplified form, all to emphasize the artist’s view of the world, and aimed to make a "bridge" between traditional neo-romantic German painting and modern expressionist painting.
After moving from Dresden to Berlin in 1911, along with other Die Brücke artists, Heckel turned increasingly to themes of melancholy and isolation. By 1913, the Brücke Group had disbanded, and in 1915, Heckel went off to war.
It is difficult to fathom the repeated devastation and destruction that both World War 1 and World War Two placed on Europe, with only a scant twenty years between 1918 and 1938 to recoup.
Heckel could not prepare for what was coming next. In 1937, the Nazi Partydeclared his work "degenerate"; it forbade him to show his work in public, and over 700 items of his art were confiscated from the nation's museums. By 1944, all of his woodcut blocks, print plates and wood carving tools were destroyed. At that time, if you were not a favorite of the Nazis, it meant you could say goodbye to your career, at least until the war was over.
Then comes “Portrait of a Man“, a gaunt self-portrait created in the difficult months just after World War Two ended, it manifests a psychic weariness that may be interpreted as broadly symbolic of the German people at that time. It is melancholic and elegiac. Technically, it demonstrates Heckel's ongoing interest to experiment with printmaking processes. The colored areas were applied to the wood with a brush rather than with the more common ink roller. The thick brushstrokes create a painterly surface that contrasts with the deliberate flatness in his earlier work. The portrait has a beautifully composed set of hands, almost prayer like with a delicate pinky collapsed (like a body) over itself. I too, loved and still love my hands. In fact, my hands were once sculpted for the prototype of a mannequin. The high-intellectualized forehead and the receding hairline of “Portrait Of A Man” I certainly identified with. I wore my embriddered black Indian gauze shirt which I purched for 4.00. Although threadbare, I still wear it.
The bold coloring and sharp angularity of Heckel’s portraits, nudes, bathers, and cabaret performers helped define the German Expressionist aesthetic in painting, and printmaking. Heckel’s oft time tawdry images of cabaret performers were of great interest and were familiar to me. The cabaret scene in NY in the early 1980’s, still had a connection to the Weimar years, and it was not unusual to hear Brecht and Weill, Lang’s Metropolis was re-released, and the German punk movement was just coming into its vanguard.
After World War II, Heckel lived at Hemmenhofen near Lake Constance, teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts until 1955. Heckel emerged as one of the most significant German artists once again. He continued painting until his death at Radolfzellin 1970.
My empathic associations with the paintings were partly formed on loose similarities in physical appearance and more associated on the temper of the canvas, its emotional resonance. It is interesting to visit the past. I curiously note that I selected three portraits from the early part of the 20th Century; each painting was at the time already 50 to 60 years old. I chose three paintings from the earlier periods of an artist’s life. I chose paintings lesser known, and not as developed or sophisticated as their other work. While all beautiful works, not ones usually identified as “masterpieces” or best representative of the artists. I chose three artists with complicated life stories, troubled lives, rife with obstacles, besot by tragedy, career setbacks and repeated personal crisis.
Who do I want to be now?
