Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne

Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne

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Antoine: 1920 and he’s 35 and she’s 22.

Juliette: When they married?

Antoine: When they died.

Juliette: Together?

Antoine: Not quite. Full of drugs and other substances, he dies of tubercular meningitis, and she throws herself out a window two days later, killing herself and her unborn child.

Juliette: Distraught?

Antoine: You could say that.

Juliette: And his work?

Antoine: Time will tell. His pictures catch your attention but there is a similarity between them all. The oval faces, the almond eyes, the pursed lips. Even his few landscapes look like the bodies he drew. That tree curves like a torso.

Juliette: Or like Jeanne's finger. Artists are crazy.

Antoine: Some, maybe, but not all. Beatrix Potter?

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Shadow artist

A shadow artist?

Someone who wants to be an artist, but never does, they lack confidence and make excuses.

A loser?

Often quite the opposite. Remember Delia?

The business consultant?

Originally she wanted to be an opera singer. Makes a good living at her work nowadays. But drives everywhere singing arias at the top of her voice. Uses her income to finance her daughter’s piano lessons. Shadow artist.

Displacement theory?

You could call it that if Delia was scolded or punished by her parents for saying she wanted to be a singer when she was younger, so her operatic aspirations re-emerged in her pushing her daughter into the piano. But I think she just lacked the confidence to do what she really wanted to do.

It’s getting a lot easier to become an artist.

But still just as difficult to make a living out of it.

True.

And artists have to get support from somewhere.

Paying the piper?

But the artist doesn’t always play the tune the piper asks. It’s a very old problem. Even Leonardo fell out with his sponsors on occasion.
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