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

On the Edge, with SightI have kept for twenty years a tattered and varnished copy of a Matt Groenig c dodgeoon entitled How to be an artificer in Torment.The cartoon asks if you were sickly, peculiar, alienated, or picked on as a youngster and, if so, did that make you feel superior? Another cell catalogs the requisite mental impediments of the creative personalityrage, confusion, and self- doubtand describes the proper look to emulate an boilersuit postpunk neobeatnik semidisheveled drab yet hip look.The cartoon portrays the artists 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, 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 accursed painters. Its a syndrome, however, that extends easily to writers, musicians, and performers. Art historiographer Douglas Hall des cribes the four key attributes of the doomed creative genius alienation, poverty, weakness, and vastnessthe 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, capital of Mississippi 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 genus Paris during the decades earlier and during World War I. Art historian Doris Krystof provides atantalizing shot of Modiglianis life in Paris His few friends and many acquaintancescalled him 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, 2002ReferencesAmedeo Modigliani Olgas Gallery On-line. 1 Nov 2002. Availablehttp//www.abcgallery.com/M/modigliani/modiglianibio.htmlAmedeo Modigliani Web Museum, Paris On-line. 5 Nov 2002. Availablehttp//www.oir.ucf.edu/wm/paint/auth/modiglianiHall, D. (1990). Modigliani. New YorkWatson-GuptillKrystof, D. (2000). Amedeo Modigliani The Poetry of Seeing, Koln, Germany Taschen.Kruszynski, A. (1998). Amedeo Modigliani Portrait of capital of Minnesota Guillaume. In L. Lumpkin(ed.), The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art Impressionist and Modern Masters(pp. 91-98). LasVegas Mirage Resorts, Incorporated.Lucie-Smith, E. (n.d.). Lives of the great 20th-Centry Artists (excerpt). The Artchive On-line 1 Nov 2002. Available http//www.artchive.com/artchive/M/modigliani.html