Monday, June 27, 2016



When I saw that ad in my NY Times I wrote this blog. I was inspired. I was particularly inspired by the middle image in the London Art Week 2016. I located it at the gallery in London featuring it and found out it had been done by Amedeo Modigliani. Here it is:

Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920) Standing Nude in Profile (Nu debout de profil) Charcoal on paper 168 1/8 x 103 9/16 in. (427 x 263 cm.) Date of work:  circa 1910-11 Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

This charcoal sketch reminded me of this Egyptian pharaoh called Akhenaten. He believed in one god, the sun.  He was almost certainly Thutankhamun's father. The many statues and reliefs of Akhenaten show a man with a slender upper chest and wide hips. This has been either attributed to some rare disease or to an artistic style of the time. I believe that even though the opening of King Tut's tomb happened in February of 1923 and Modigliani had died he may have noticed Akhenaten's image in some museum.



When my new model and friend Olena sent me pictures of her new hair (very short and very blue) I had an instant realization of what we would work on in our next session. This happened (as I write this) on Thursday. I would like to point out here that Olena is the kind of model that any artist (even one like this one who dismisses that epithet) would do anything to have. She is tall, has a lovely body, she has those cheekbones of a highfalutin model (which she was in Colombia), she is smart, serious, punctual and best of all we talk Spanish!

For our Modigliani session I used my Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD with Kodak T-Max 100 film and another back with Kodak Portra 160 (and yes Kodak still makes film), and my Fuji X-E1. The photos here were all taken with the Fuji and for the last one instead of my usual soft box I used my large ring flash.