Lunia Czechowska 1918

Amedeo Modigliani painted Lunia Czechowska, with oils on canvas. Have you ever watched someone paint, really watched them? The way they keep circling, adding, and taking away? I imagine Modigliani doing just that, coaxing this face into being. The color palette of reds and blacks, feels limited, but then you notice how much he achieves with this restraint. I wonder what it was like for him, painting Lunia. Was there music playing? Did they talk? There is something so intimate and vulnerable about a portrait, isn't there? I think of other painters, like Alice Neel, how they captured not just a likeness but a whole world of feeling. Look at the line of her nose, how it swoops down, almost like a question mark. Is this a way of seeing or a way of feeling? Painters, we are all in conversation, borrowing and stealing and transforming each other's ideas. It's a constant exchange, like a game of telephone, but instead of words, we use color, line, and form. Painting doesn't give us answers, but invites us to keep looking, keep feeling, keep questioning.