Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/883104
October 5 • 2017 43 jn attitudes, batted about freely in various newspapers and social circles, shocked Modigliani, who had never experienced this kind of bias in his Italian hometown of Livorno, a port city that remained generally free of restrictions and persecutions against the Jews until the Fascist government of the 1930s. In Klein's view, Modigliani's assertion of his Judaism as a matter-of-course in introducing himself reveals his pride in his Jewish identity. For most people, Klein says, Modigliani's ethnicity was "invisible," as he neither looked nor sounded like the derisive caricature of a hooked-nosed Jew who spoke French with the accent of some- one born in an Eastern European shtetl. Instead, because his mother had been born in Marseille, Modigliani spoke fluent French, without a foreign accent. In addition, as a Sephardic Jew whose generational roots went back to Spain and Portugal, he resem- bled someone from the Mediterranean, not an "outsider" from beyond France's borders. "He could easily have passed as gentile but he chose not to," says Klein. "Rather than be victimized or silent, he asserted himself as a Jew." Equally telling of his commitment to his Jewish heritage, Klein says, is the fact that the very first painting he exhibited in Paris (and which will appear in the Jewish Museum exhibit) was called La Juive (The Jewess). The portrait, which Modigliani painted in 1907-8, depicts a pale, dark-haired woman with deep-set eyes, whose eyes and nose are streaked with green. "There is an emphasis on both the nose and the deep-set eyes, as if to emphasize and question at the same time, what is 'Jewish,'" he says. Although anti-Semites were caricaturing Jews as physically impure or deformed, he continues, "Modigliani was saying … these [ features] are beauti- ful." This is not the first time the Jewish Museum has showcased Modigliani's work. In 2004, it exhibited a major retrospective, "Modigliani: Beyond the Myth." This time, the majority of the exhibit's works derive from Modigliani's early years in Paris, a time when he concentrated on drawings and sculp- ture. Modigliani himself gave many of the draw- ings displayed here to his friend and first patron, Dr. Paul Alexandre, who amassed a collection of some 450 of the artist's works. Several of those drawings, included in the current exhibit, are portraits of Alexandre, dark-haired and bearded with a slightly curled mustache, dressed formally but standing informally with his left hand dipped into his pocket. The range of Modigliani's artistic influences are also highlighted. Many drawings reimagine, through a modern lens, the figures of the stately sculpted ancient Greek caryatids that were used as support columns in classical architecture. Of particular interest is the fact that although caryatid figures were traditionally female only, Modigliani included male or gender ambiguous figures — an indication that Modigliani looked at gender in a more fluid way than usual for the era. His numerous drawings of heads often have the appearance of masks, in keeping with his interest in non-Western art from Africa and Asia. He also incorporated elements of Egyptian art, seen to striking effect in his studies and drawings of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom he first met in 1910 and with whom he often went to the Louvre to view its Egyptian collection. By including artistic traditions from around the world, Modigliani, says Klein, encompassed "global- ism before the word existed." • details "Modigliani Unmasked" runs through Feb. 4, 2018, at the Jewish Museum, New York. Thejewishmuseum.org. MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK MRS. SIMON GUGGENHEIM FUND MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK. BEQUEST OF MRS. HARRIET H. JONAS LAURE DENIER COLLECTION, PAUL ALEXANDRE FAMILY, COURTESY OF RICHARD NATHANSON, LONDON