Head of a Girl 1918

Amedeo Modigliani made this painting of a girl’s head sometime in the early 20th century, we think, using oil on canvas. Look how Modigliani reduced her eyes to almond shapes without pupils, which gives her face this otherworldly gaze. I’m kind of imagining him in his studio, maybe in Paris, stepping back, squinting, and then elongating her nose, making it a smooth, almost classical line. Her skin, softly flushed, is built up with thin layers of paint. I wonder if he knew how unsettling and beautiful these choices would be? The warm palette is comforting, but the elongated features are stranger, more modern, perhaps even a bit sad. Modigliani was obsessed with simplification and these kinds of subtle distortions, a sort of signature, which reminds me of the ways Brancusi was abstracting the figure in sculpture at the same time. He seemed to be on a mission to capture the essence of a person.