亚美迪欧莫迪利安尼《两个女孩》(伦敦佳士得2015)

亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼《两个女孩》（伦敦佳士得2015）亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼两个女孩Les deuxfilles 伦敦佳士得2015.2 成交价758.65万英镑作品介绍Les deux filles is one of only five known double portraits painted by Modigliani to have been recorded by Ambrogio Ceroni inhis 1970 catalogue raisonné. Throughout his entire oeuvre, Modigliani generally dedicated himself to the isolated figure,exploring no compositional device other than a single human beingviewed face to face. For the most part, it was enough for theartist's intense observation of individual characterization to engage with a single model, yet his rare ventures into multiplefigure arrangements are remarkable for their insight into humanrelationships and the energy communicated by different identities.Of Modigliani's five double portraits, two are portraits ofbridalcouples, the highly stylized Les époux of 1915 (formerly in thecollection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Ceroni no. 55)and the celebrated portrait of his close friend, the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and his wife Bertha (1916, Art Institute of Chicago, Ceroni no. 161). These works celebrate the union betweenwoman and man, whilst Modigliani's other double portraits wouldaddress the theme of mother and child (Femme assise avec un enfant,1919, Musée d'Art Moderne, V illeneuve-d'Ascq, Ceroni no. 334; andGitane avec un enfant, 1918, Ceroni no. 247, National Gallery ofArt, Washington) - pictures that owe much to Modigliani's Italianinheritance and his enduring love of the early Renaissance masters.Les deux filles is a tender and perceptive painting thatexploresthe connection between two young girls, possibly sisters, whomModigliani has described in a refined visual language that is bothcompellingly subjective and intuitive.Several of the early literature references to Les deux filles suggest that the composition was painted in 1917 when Modiglianiwas working in Paris, including Arthur Pfannsteil's 1929 monograph,in which he describes the sitters as 'two flowers growing from thepaving stones of the big city' (op. cit., p. 119). However, the painting has since been attributed to 1918 in publications byCeroni, Osvaldo Patani and Christian Parisot and is now consideredto be part of a group of portraits dedicated to the portrayal ofchildren that Modigliani painted whilst he was living and workingin the South of France (Ceroni, op. cit., p. 100). Modigliani travelled to the C?te d'Azur in March 1918 and remained there forover a year. The deprivations of the First World War, the shortageof food and coal had weakened the painter's health and when thebombardment of Paris began, his dealer Léopold Zborowski decided tofollow the vast numbers fleeing the perilous capital for the South,taking his contingent of artists and their closest companions withhim. Cha?m Soutine, Tsuguharu Foujita and Fernande Barrey were allincluded in Zborowski's entourage, and Modigliani was accompaniedby his pregnant mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne and her mother.亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼两个女孩Les deuxfilles 局部Part of Zborowski's plan in going to the South of France wasto sell works, and especially pictures by Modigliani, to therichclientele that he was sure still haunted the grand and fashionablehotels in Nice and Cagnes, having witnessed them on a prior visit.However, this plan came to nought, and he barely managed to scrapetogether enough to exist upon -- his costs only increased when thevarious elements within the group insisted upon staying underdifferent roofs. This lack of fortune had a direct effect on thepaintings of Modigliani, especially in terms of content, for theportrait commissions that Zborowski had optimistically assumedwould materialise failed to do so and he was no longer able to payfor professional models as he had done in Paris. As a consequence,Zborowski's wife and Jeanne sat for many of Modigliani'spictures,but with tensions mounting within the family group, he found itincreasingly necessary to rely on the local people around him. Thisis almost certainly one of the reasons that Les deux filles waspainted. Yet, it was not only the lack of models that led him topaint so many pictures of young people during this period. In part,it may have been the prospect of imminent fatherhood that increasedhis interest in them as a subject, as well as his desire to capturetheir engaging characters and purity of spirit.Modigliani's intelligent awareness of his sitter's personalities is the result of his long-standing search for a visual window into the soul and he was clearly interested in thepersona of the brunette girl in this image as he also depicted herin a sister picture, Fillette debout en tablier noir (1918, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Ceroni no. 241). Both Fillette debout entablier noir and the slightly larger Les deux filles have been exhibited together on numerous occasions to underline their closerelationship, including exhibitions in Paris and Marseille in 1958and Düsseldorf and Zurich in 1991. In his characteristic study ofan isolated model rendered in three-quarter length, Modiglianidepicts the delicately featured, dark-haired girl standing in aninterior that shares the subtle and masterfully handled suffusionof green, greys and ochre hues. This painting contains an entirelydifferent compositional dynamic to the asymmetry of Les deuxfilles, with its grid-like structure provided by the counterbalanceof the horizontal lines of the chest of drawers and the strongverticality of the girl's pose. Modigliani enhances her sense ofchildishness and vulnerability in Fillette debout en tablier noirby depicting her with her hands hanging loosely by her sides andher head tilted at an inquisitive and somewhat awkward angle.亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼两个女孩Les deuxfilles 局部In Les deux filles this same girl appears older, with aseductively heightened colouration and sophisticated hairstyle thatcontrasts with the natural and relaxed appearance of the youngerchild. This juxtaposition grants an almost maternal aspect to theolder girl and creates a remarkably sensitive characterization ofthe transition from childhood to the threshold of womanhood.Although the relationship between these young models is unknown, itappears Modigliani deliberately chose them for their opposingcharacteristics; the fair hair, blue eyes and clean white pinaforeof the younger girl contrasting with the elder's dark colouring andblack smock. This same smock, with its discreet embroidery andscratched-in seam work is also worn by a different model in a bustportrait from this period, indicating this may well have been alocal school uniform (Jeune fille blonde en buste, 1919, Ceroni no.296). Whilst the model in the later portrait is depicted with blankvoids for eyes, Modigliani clearly defines his sitter's irises inthe present work to lend them an engaging presence that conveys atrue sense of the girls' shy, yet candid nature and perhaps eventheir curiosity with the artist and the artistic process. Modigliani's empathy towards his unknown sitters during thisperiod has been evocatively described by his daughter, JeanneModigliani, who possibly refers to Les deux filles as being animage from Paris, indicating there was still some debate over itsdate at the time: 'At this time, Modigliani's attitude towards andthe depiction of his models became calmer and more peaceful. Theapprentice, the porter's son, the maid in Cagnes, little Maria, thetwo girls in Paris, all enter Modigliani's pictorial world with a sad dignity. Their interior vision, captured in a private dream,accentuates their solitude and at the same time enshrines theirmorality with a poetic halo. Their status in life is certainly nota happy one, but they possess nobility and moral values. They arethe most convincing witnesses of the beauty and goodness ofmankind' (J. Modigliani cited in 'Modigliani sans Légende', exh.cat., Amedeo Modigliani, 1884-1920, Musée National d'Art Moderne,Paris, 1981, p. 89).亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼两个女孩Les deuxfilles 局部In their subtle psychological insight, pictures like Les deuxfilles owe a substantial debt to the portraits of Cézanne. Modigliani greatly admired the pi ctures of Cézanne and his move tothe Midi, where the older master had painted throughout his life,may have intensified Modigliani's engagement with his work.Notably, many of Cézanne's portraits from the 1890sdepict childrenand peasants and are rendered with the same sympathy and passivemonumentality that Modigliani brings to his sitters a generationlater. The complex sense of space and mass in Cézanne's portraitshad a deep and lasting influence on Modigliani's own portraitstyle, as did the planar distortions of the primitive masks he soadmired. These visual references contribute to theex-pressiveenergy and imbalance in Les deux filles, particularly in the rendering of the younger girl's face, which features a multidirectional analysis of space similar to that used by theCubists. This deliberate distortion is used to heighten the tensionbetween the two models, contrasting a sense of movement compatiblewith the unsettled temperament of a young child with theserenelyfeminine nature of the older girl to create an image that powerfully evokes the eventual path to maturity.Les deux filles clearly displays Modigliani's virtuoso feeling for paint. His obsession for refining his subjects into simple,interlocking curvilinear forms is evident in the pentimenti visiblebelow the hands of the younger child, where pencil lines chart outhis method of perfecting the composition. Modigliani's handling ofpigment varies across the canvas, from the thin scumbled brushworkused to diffuse the variegated hues of the background to the highlyviscous textures on the figures and chair, the painting manifests apassionate involvement with the qualities and possibilities of hismaterials and represents the height of his technical development.Les deux filles was fir st acquired by Léopold Zborowski, whohad financed Modigliani's lifestyle and paid for his materials inexchange for all his paintings since 1916. The painting was subsequently selected and purchased by Jonas Netter, who devotedhimself to accumulating a formidable collection of pictures byModigliani, Kisling, Soutine and Utrillo. These he had bought from1915 onwards, almost all with the help of Zborowski. Indeed, Netteris known to have purchased at least ten Modigliani paintings whilstthe painter was based in Nice, including Fillette in blu (1918,Ceroni no. 245), and he may have acquired Les deux filles in thissame group. Netter was one of the major collectors who, along withRoger Dutilleul, contributed to the growth in Modigliani'sposthumous reputation and many of the pictures that he once ownedare now housed in distinguished public collections such as theMusée d'Art Moderne, Paris, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Museu deArte Contemporanea da Universidade, S?o Paulo.亚美迪欧·莫迪利安尼两个女孩Les deuxfilles 局部参考译文《两个女孩》是莫迪利亚尼所画的五幅已知的双人画之一，这五幅画像是由安布罗吉奥·塞罗尼在1970年录制的。