Modigliani – bohemianism's poster boy

Nude, 1917

Modigliani was just 35 when he died in Paris, in 1920, of tuberculosis exacerbated by alcohol and drugs. Just after his funeral, Jeanne Hébuterne, eight months pregnant with the couple’s second child, threw herself out of a fifth-floor window.

He’d had just one solo exhibition (closed by the Parisian police after a day because of its ‘shocking’ nudes), sold only a few works – for little money – and died destitute.

If the stereotype of the self-destructive bohemian artist needed a poster boy, Modigliani would be a prime contender.

Young Gypsy, 1909

It’s fitting too that, like van Gogh, his work would only become appreciated and valued in the years after his death.

Tate Modern in London has been hosting a major Modigliani exhibition since November – it closes on 2 April – and after various false starts, The Other Half and I finally caught it, just before seeing the new Picasso exhibition in the same gallery.

The two men knew each other – but what strikes one most when seeing these two exhibitions so close together is the ferocity of their working: Modigliani over the latter part of his short career (he destroyed most of his early work) and Picasso particularly in the single year that the new exhibition seeks to shine a light on.

Both exhibitions also include works that are not the artist’s best, but which provide a deeper context for visitors.

The earliest of Modigliani’s works shown here reveal the influence of Cézanne – not least in the palette – before we reach the elongated figures that are instantly recognisable.

But one of the first exhibits, The Young Gypsy from 1909 tells us straight away where we’re headed, with its accentuated cheekbones, puckered lips and almondised eyes.

Portrait of Léopold Survage, 1918

There are plenty of these here – both nudes and portraits. In some, the line is exquisite – in others, less so, while there can be an archness in some of the portraits that helps to embed them firmly in your mind – the 1915 portrait of art dealer Paul Guillaume is a perfect example.

On a personal level, I was delighted to see that the curators had included his portrait of Leopold Survage, a fascinating artist who studied briefly under Matisse in 1905 and later followed in his footsteps to Collioure.

It’s impossible to know whether – and how – Modigliani would have developed were it not for his early death. Some art historians believe he would have gone on to much greater things, but his creativity was such that his work stays long in the mind – perhaps not least because he is pretty much impossible to categorise in terms of labels of any school or style. There is simply Modigliani.

• Modigliani is at Tate Modern until 2 April

Art for Collioure's sake

A child explores George Ayat's Collioure acrylics

A trip to Collioure just wouldn’t be the real thing without a substantial dose of art: it’s as integral a part of the village as are the anchovies that once provided its main source of income and employment.

Surf the internet and you’ll find various estimates for how many galleries line the charming streets – anything from 20 to 40 – this year, we even staying on Rue de la Fraternité, which boasts more galleries than any other single thoroughfare.

But even numbering the galleries accurately does not paint the full picture: many more artists display and sell their work from pitches along the promenade at Boromar or around the walls of the chateau, where visitors wind their way between the Faubourg and the Mouré, past the clear, turquoise waters.

Le filet du lamparo à Collioure by Willy Mucha

After two years of really excellent special summer exhibitions, the village’s Musée d’Art Moderne this year staged a much smaller temporary exhibit, together with offering the opportunity to view its standing collection.

Various series of geometric, abstract works by Jaume Rocamora, including Suite Collioure (2013-14) and Intervalles imbriqués (1996) are certainly interesting.

And the same can be said of George Ayats’s series of bold acrylic on canvas abstracts that are collectively titled Collioure, and which use a palette that is reminiscent of those used by Survage and Pignon in their Collioure paintings that formed the basis of those previous exhibitions.

But the standing collection is fascinating, as it concentrates completely on how a number of artists have chosen to paint this artistically iconic village since the early part of the 20th century.

Fort Mirador by Lucien Coutard

Sadly, there is nothing by that man, Matisse, but he is always in the back of your mind as you wander around the cool, white rooms.

Jean Peské’s pastel, Côte rocheuse (undated), has lovely textures and colours, while Augustin Hanicotte’s Les voiles blanches (1930) is another chance to see some fine pastel work.

Willy Mucha’s Le filet du lamparo à Collioure (oil on canvas, 1942-44) abstracts the subject in a way that seems to suggest the chaos and carnage of war amid the fishing boats.

Paysage de Collioure, by Henri Marre

Henri de Maistre’s Collioure, vue general (1941) is a very nice rendering in oil of the view from Port d’Avall, while Lucien Coutard’s 1945 gouache and watercolour on paper of Fort Mirador is a super piece of work.

The exhibits – at least given our direction of travel – concluded with Barques à Collioure (graphite on paper, 1931) and Vue de Collioure (watercolour on wood, 1929) by Survage, both of which are perfectly sound, but neither of which have the power or the inventive spark of the paintings we saw in the solo exhibition of his Collioure works in 2012.

But before that came Henri Marre’s Paysage de Collioure, a beautiful oil on canvas from 1915, painted a full decade after Matisse’s View of Collioure from the iconic year of 1905, taking the same view and treating it, if fluidly, still rather more conventionally.

View of Collioure, by Matisse

Indeed, this is, in many ways, what all these artists are measured against – the artistic explosion that was to be dubbed ‘Fauvism’.

And while most settle for considerably more conventional approaches than Matisse, Derain and Dufy, it’s perhaps indicative of the village’s incredible beauty and charm – and yes, its very special light – that these stand as a genuinely interesting and worthwhile collection of works by ‘lesser’ painters.

In the holiday season, a walk around the village – whose walls are peppered with nearly two dozen reproductions of the Collioure works of Matisse and Derain – provides quick confirmation of the fact that seeking a language to convey the immediate area has not ceased, and that not all paintings or painters are equal.

Vue de Collioure, by Survage

Some of the efforts also convey a lesson: simply applying vivid colours to a canvas will not make you into the next Matisse. Or put it another way: no, your five year old could not do this.

Among the most successful artists at conveying the village are Barry Blend (of whom much more here) and Jean-Philip Roch, who, entirely coincidentally, has a gallery slap bang next to Barry’s on the Rue de la Fraternité.

It’s a joyful style, which includes some very interesting artistic decisions – not least leaving out some trees in order to properly convey the terraces where the grapes grow in some pictures.

That self-defined Catalan, Picasso, wanted to live in the village in the 1950s, but with no house big enough for that megastar of modern art, the local council demurred at letting him have part of the chateau. A little short-sighted, perhaps?

Collioure view by Jean-Philip Roch

And even today, while this year’s bright, new headquarters for the Fauvism Trail is a huge improvement on its predecessor, one senses they could still make more of the connection.

For instance, if a fine art gallery in London can sell licensed lithographs of works by Matisse, then why not here, of all places?

But perhaps the rather low-key commercialism is part of the charm.

“No sky is bluer than Collioure’s,” stated Matisse.

And whether Collioure can – or would want to – exploit the connection more or not, it remains the case that this almost impossibly beautiful village draws those who want to try to capture its glories.

It’s difficult to imagine that ending any time soon. After all, Collioure without art would be like fish without chips. Or a pissaladière without anchovies.

Books for the beach: the great annual dilemma

Loki with, err, her gospel

And so it begins: the great annual kerfuffle about What Books am I Taking on Holiday.

It brings with it the annual question of: ‘why don’t you get a Kindle?’ Well, I have a tablet, and I read news and features on it, but don’t particularly like reading anything longer.

I love the feel, the heft, the smell, the sense of a real book.

And however good the backlighting is on a device, glass does not take well to being buffeted by sand (oddly enough) and other elements, while computer technology does not, generally speaking, make good bedfellows with water.

I don’t an electronic device into the bath – so why would I risk dropping one into the sea or similar?

Books it is – and this ritual is one that, even in its apparent indecisiveness, I enjoy.

Of course, it adds weight to the baggage, but I’m not travelling by air.

The Other Half is being seriously serious this time around, with an intention of taking Piketty for the beach – only a doubting Thomas would not concede that Capital in the Twenty-First Century has already caused enough of a stir to render the first name of its author as superfluous.

And Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life, a massive new biography by Stephen Parker, is also sitting ready to find a corner in the case.

My own reading list is somewhat different – although the Brecht will be available if the mood takes me.

First up is The Colours of Catalonia: In the Footsteps of Twentieth-Century Artists by Virginie Raguenaud, which I bought in Collioure in the first place – and will now take back to provide artistic background for this trip.

It does, of course, include a section on Collioure and Matisse and the Fauves. And Raguenaud talks of Ceret and Elne, of Picasso and Survage.

Museums Without Walls, by Jonathan Meades, is also penciled in for provision of pithy pointers to looking at and reading the built environment around us.

And then I have Five Quarters of the Orange, Holy Fools and Coastliners – three novels, all set in France, by Joanne Harris, together with The Gospel of Loki, her reworking of Norse myth from earlier this year.

Harris is one of those writers I haven’t read as much of as I have meant to – but that’s largely out of fear. For ages, I dreaded any of her other titles being a let-down after the glories of Chocolat, which is a rare beast, in that it’s a book I’ve read rather more than once.

Back in 2005, I reviewed Gentlemen and Players for a magazine – and thoroughly enjoyed that too – but subsequent re-reads of Chocolat and a first reading of its sequel, The Lollipop Shoes, were as far as I dipped my foot into Harris’s oeuvre until dipping into Blackberry Wine a week or so ago.

I’d always intended to get a copy of The Gospel of Loki, but this has not been a big reading year, so hadn’t got around to it until The Other Half suggested it for the holiday list.

One Amazon reviewer suggested that Loki won’t appeal to anyone who liked Chocolat, but that seems a remarkably limiting idea with no logic.

I love Chocolat – and I love the Norse myths. I can’t be unique – well, not on that score, at least.

As Terry Pratchett’s dust jacket biog points out, he is “sometimes accused of literature”.

Harris is, first and foremost, a wonderful storyteller, with a great ability to weave modern fairytales – on occasion, very darkly – and to employ magic realism, but she’s also a writer of the sort of subtlety that the same can be said of her: indeed, she makes me think of Angela Carter.

Take Chocolat: it’s a wonderful story, but it’s also ‘about’ so much: about life, living, pleasure and guilt, and it leaves you with plenty of food for thought.

My mother didn’t like it, but then it was only some time after I’d given her a copy that it dawned on me that Harris’s approach to both the sensual pleasures of life and to religion might not entirely have appealed to her.

C’est la vie, as those damnable Frenchies might say.

Blackberry Wine is a great read, and as I turned the final page and brushed away a tear – yes, you really do care that much about the characters Harris creates – thus was born the feeling that Proust can wait.