Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête will be on view at Phillips through November 17, when it will be auctioned off for the first time ever (photo courtesy Phillips)
IN SEARCH OF THE ETERNAL: AMEDEO MODIGLIANI’S TÊTE
Phillips Auction House
432 Park Ave. at Fifty-Sixth St.
Daily through November 17, free
phillips.com
Available at auction for the first time ever, Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête won’t cost you $28–$35 million to revel in its beauty; that is the estimated price it would take to bring it home with you, but through November 17 you can bathe yourself in its quiet wonder for free at Phillips on Fifty-Sixth and Park. It’s one of approximately twenty-eight stone sculptures made by the Italian artist, who died in 1920 in his longtime home of Paris at the age of thirty-five of tubercular meningitis; he left behind a legacy of elongated portraits, nudes, and sculptures. He referred to his sculptures as “columns of tenderness” that would someday be caryatids in his “temple of beauty”; he gave up the discipline in 1914.
Carved from a single block of limestone between 1911 and 1912, the nearly thirty-inch Tête has been in private hands for more than fifty years.
“Tête embodies everything that makes Modigliani’s sculpture so revered, including its profound art historical importance,” Phillips deputy chairman Jeremiah Evarts said in a statement. “Drawing on influences ranging from ancient Egyptian, Cycladic, and African art to the radical innovations of early twentieth-century Modernism, the work bridges millennia of artistic tradition while remaining unmistakably Modigliani.”
Two days after Modigliani died, his pregnant common-law wife, French painter and artist’s model Jeanne Hébuterne, committed suicide; she was twenty-one. They are buried together in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, with the following written on their gravestone: “Amedeo died when he reached glory and Jeanne was his devoted companion to the point of extreme sacrifice.”
The Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 17 also includes lots by Claude Monet, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock, François-Xavier Lalanne, Anselm Kiefer, Rashid Johnson, and Derek Fordjour, among others.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]