Monday, February 11, 2008

Yesterday was spent with the dead at Pere Lachaise. What better why to put your life in perspective and contemplate what’s truly important than to be reminded of your own mortality. While wondering through the cemetery I ran into an old friend Amedeo Modigliani.

Modigliani died January 24, 1920 of tubercular meningitis at the age of 35. His excessive drug and alcohol use was a major factor in his death. The following day his common-law-wife, Jeanne Hebuterne, eight months pregnant, jumped from a 5th floor window- she was only 22 years old. They had a 14-month-old daughter, Jeanne, who was adopted by Modigliani’s sister. Very sad- Modi should have put down the bottle and the pipe and taken care of his family.

3 comments:

p said...

i read a bio on him, it was torturous and fascinating; he was a wretched person but somehow got people to pay for his every need most of the time...he lived in squalor and moved often. he lived to paint. not a way i want to go it. he truly lived to paint amongst addictions and physical roadblocks that would land most of on our deathbeds.

Badaude said...

I always go to see my favourite illustrator, Honore Daumier - who was twice incarcerated in mental asylums by the Louis Philippe 1830s government for publishing anti-state cartoons. (Who said being an illustrator was a quiet life?). His grave is relatively overlooked, though you can find lots of his work in the musee d'orsay. He's buried somewhere behind Parmentier and his potato...
xbadaude

Karyn said...

It's horribly sad.

Loving London, btw.