Study for The Cellist (1909) “Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60 cm” [Collection Dr. Paul Alexandre, Paris, France] -- Amedeo Modigliani (Italian; 1884 - 1920)

Modigliani gives his protagonist a preferential treatment – he identifies with him, he withdraws in front of the cellist’s music in reverie for a medium of art different from that of his own. Following the auditory concentration of the cellist , Modigliani intentionally makes the visual pallet of the painting dull and inexpressive (for example, he reduces the background pattern behind the musician into a barely discernible certainty). The painter kneels before the unity of the cellist and the music he makes his cello produce/his cello makes him create.

 

Let’s look at the painting again. Like a painter’s studio looks like a disorderly workshop, the interior where the cellist works is, as if, visually reduced to non-significance. It is the music that destroys the very idea of human interior – it is, as though, turns it off. Interior stops to exist when lovers make love. The cellist follows the cello, which moves not in space but in time, moves without space. Instead of space we, as if, see what is inside the cello, area which looks trivial only in visual terms – it’s just for listening.

 

But what is that on the cellist’s bow – some kind of stuff, like ash or mold covered with dust? It is the sounds, the music the cellist and the cello produce between human being and the angel who was just sleeping inside the cello and is awakened by the human inspiration which has touched the silence of the instrument. The musician in this moment became as if, reincarnation of this angel – in the box of the room as a second cello. Modigliani registers the moment of awakening. The painter plays the role of a midwife in this birth in front of our eyes. The visual and the auditory, the painting and the music come together in the very moment of birth of creation.

 

Modigliani makes painting sing, like he makes music visual. Painting music is like playing painting as cello. Like composer and cellist disappear in the music, the painter disappears in his painting. Creativity is cruel – it creates reality like a future life which comes because of and instead of its creators.

 

Source: How To Make A Painting Sing, How to Make Music Painterly (posted by Victor in Acting-Out Politics)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani?fbclid=IwAR0p1iJq...

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