Source unknown – Title unknown (19XX)

There are just scads of similarities between the above and Modigliani’s Nu Couché au coussin Bleu.

I’m much more interested in the differences, however.

The above is firmly contextualized within a room. A fainting couch, a table covered with a cloth, a wastebasket, wallpaper and what could be wainscotting or a closed door.

Modigliani, on the other hand, moves from left to right through most detail–the texture of the couch–to less detail (the subject) and then to least detail (i.e. the background that shares both the color scheme and a Rorschach-esque feel of the cover art for the latest Cobalt album Slow Forever).

Also, the subject above has her right leg over her left thigh, effectively the opposite of Modigliani–where the subject is depicted with her top leg pushed back and her lower leg forward; to me this suggests a sense where in the image above the subject is either waking from a nap, except for the way she’s covering her eyes–which is clearly more coy and playful given her smile.

Whereas with Modigliani, there’s a sense that this is a post-coital scene and the subject is trying to leave the suggestion that she’s ready for round two open.

To me that’s one of the most exciting things about photography. To an extent–greater than with painting but with less rigidity than sculpture–you are limited to what is physically possible. Modigliani was shit at depicting bodies. His most famous painting Reclining Nude (1917) is a great example of this. As anyone with breasts knows when you lay flat on your back, a great deal of the volume of the breast pushes into the armpit area. Actually, I’m making it more difficult then I need to just compare the above image with Nu Couché au coussin Bleu and you’ll clearly note how the pose looks IRL vs in a painting.

I actually prefer the above to anything I’ve ever encountered of Modigliani work. I especially like the way she’s wearing the vertical striped shirt and how that both compliments the wall paper and creates dimensionality against the pattern of the couch.

But both the photographer her and Modigliani make the same mistake. There’s no sense of extension beyond the boundary of the frame edge. The glimpse of the world we’re provided is purposefully bounded. We see what we are intended to see and nothing more.

Physically, both models legs are amputated just above the knee and as such they cannot leave the scene where they have been splayed for the viewer.