In our eighth season, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction considering why they garnered so much money, and discovering their backstories, beginning with Amadeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché.

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Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. 

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

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Links and further resources

Sotheby’s: At $157.2 Million, Modigliani's Greatest Nude Is Also the Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold at Sotheby's

Artsy: What Makes Modigliani’s Nu Couché Worth $100 Million?

Artnet: Chinese Billionaire Liu Yiqian Is the Buyer for the Record-Breaking $170-Million Modigliani Nude

Smithsonian Magazine: Modigliani: Misunderstood

Episode Transcript

Picture this. The year is 2015, the place is New York City. Imagine a large room filled with neatly lined chairs and hundreds of art enthusiasts holding numbered paddles in their hands. They listen intently to a British man donning a finely tailored suit, iridescent purple tie and a buttery accent, standing at a podium clad with a single word in gold letters.  “CHRISTIE’S,” it declares proudly.  As a large display wall rotates nearby, a well-lit piece of art commands the attention of all present. The sharply-dressed man begins the auction ritual by introducing lot 8A, declaring it to be, quote,  “The beautiful Modigliani,” and announces the starting price of $75 million. Necks strain to view the canvas, where they see a darkly-outlined nude--a  woman, of course, as most modern nudes are--lounging on a bright red duvet, a soft blue pillow behind her back, with her oil-painted face seductively looking up at the viewer, all heavy-lidded eyes, rouged cheeks, and subtly smiling red lips.  The composition cuts off just above her knees and wrists, so of course, the focal point is her starkly nude chest and torso. She’s beguiling. The bidding begins. Suddenly, prices are being shouted back and forth across the room, raising higher and higher until all attention is focused upon two Christie’s employees, talking quickly via telephone to two restless potential buyers. The numbers climb on the screen next to the auctioneer, and the gathered crowd gapes at the ascending price, even laughing with incredulity. With one final wave of a hand, the auctioneer proclaims, “All done, at $152 million dollars,” dropping his gavel and hitting the podium with a resounding “SOLD.” 

Yes, you heard that right, the total sale price of this Modigliani was $152 million— and that wasn’t even considering the auction house fees, or buyer’s premium, which increased the out-of-pocket amount to $170.4 million.  So who was the buyer responsible for this purchase? The man who dished out that sky-high amount for Nu Couché was Liu Yiqian, a taxi driver turned billionaire/art collector from Shanghai, China, a man whose family now owns two private art museums and who purportedly paid that full $170.4 million amount on his AMEX (what a life!). It was staggering—and at the time, it broke the record for the second highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art, and it afforded Modigliani elite access to the so-called “100 million club,” an extremely small and exclusive club of (mostly dead white male) artists, including Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Alberto Giacometti, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But a question, for many people, remains: although beautiful pieces, what really makes these artist’s works worth 9 figures? What contributes to these astronomical prices for a canvas with some paint on it? I guess, at the end of the day it is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. But could there be something more? 

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season eight, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction and considering why they garnered so much money, beginning today with Amadeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

While the business of art auctions has some non-transparent inner workings, we do know that there are a few major factors that can establish the worth, or value, of a piece of art. First, it’s the subject matter—what the work of art represents, and how that subject matter fits into the artist’s body of work. Is it a rare scene? Is it part of a famous series? Is it an unpopular work, or one that isn’t as well-made, for example, as others? Next comes the provenance and exhibition history, meaning who owned the artwork in the past, if any, and where it has been shown in museums, galleries, or elsewhere. Finally, there’s the current art market for any particular artist. All of this comes together to paint—forgive the pin—a portrait of the worth of a work of art. But there’s also another element that’s just as important, and that’s art history, the background all about this artist, his time period, and his career. So to better understand why Nu Couché sold for such an unheard-of price, we need to take a closer look at all these factors, beginning with the artist himself and his own personal history. 

Amedeo, or “Dedo,” Modigliani was the youngest of 4 children born to Jewish parents in Livorno, Italy in 1884. Though Dedo’s parents owned a successful mining company, his early childhood coincided with an economic downturn in Livorno that eventually resulted in his parents’ business collapsing and ultimate bankruptcy. Though they eventually made it through this difficult time, things weren’t smooth-sailing for Dedo and his family. He was plagued with poor health throughout his short life, beginning with a pleurisy diagnosis at age 11 and then with tuberculosis several years later. In a way, his story is similar to that of Andy Warhol’s, whole childhood we discussed briefly back in the first season of this podcast in 2016, because Modigliani, like Warhol, was bedridden for long periods of time, and he was introduced to literature, poetry, philosophy, and most critically— the visual arts to during this period to pass the time.

Once he was sufficiently healed and in his early teenage years, he began taking drawing lessons, enjoying the process so much that he soon gave up his regular schooling altogether to study exclusively with his drawing teacher, a man named Guglielmo Micheli. After that, it was on to art schools in Venice and then, finally, Florence. There, he was introduced to Manuel Otiz de Zarate, a Chilean painter, who spoke very highly of a particular group of artists living in France— Paris, to be specific. The Impressionists, he said, had been doing something incredible, and the artists following in their footsteps—whom we call today the “Post-Impressionists”— were just as fascinating. Intrigued by Zarate’s stories of these avant-garde makers, Modigliani determined that he wanted to be in the thick of this action and moved to Paris in 1906. 

Once in Paris, he soaked up all the city had to offer, especially the art in its many world-renowned institutions, eating up everything that the thriving art world of early 20th century Paris had to offer, from admiring the old masters at the Louvre and other museums, to enjoying the most cutting edge and experimental works on display in small local galleries. 

And as a person so seriously interested in the art world, he couldn’t help but become familiar with some of its key players: Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo. And the laundry list of pals and influencers extended to those whose works he loved most of all: Henri de Toulouse-Laurtrec and Paul Cézanne, especially, whose works he emulated during the early part of his career. Yet despite these connections, his work received little interest, and like Van Gogh, Monet, and so many others long before and long after, Modigliani traipsed from one gallery to the next, from one dealer to the next, attempting to sell his works, find representation, or even to land a feasible job. Now, let me warn you right off the back that this story isn’t a happy one. Again, like Van Gogh, Modigliani found himself trading artworks for food and other necessities, sending his artwork onward just to survive. It didn’t make the already-unhealthy artist any healthier, and it wouldn’t do much to improve his chances, either.

Dedo Modigliani caught a glimmer of hope in 1907 when he met Paul Alexandre, a physician who became a good friend and a patron of his works, as he was a known art collector. And it was through Alexandre that he met sculptor Constantin Brancusi, later known for his abstract and minimalist sculptures like his seminal Bird in Space. Brancusi’s work inspired Modigliani, as did his exposure to both African and Southeast Asian art that he discovered during his visits to the Louvre and other Parisian museums. Like Brancusi, these so-called “primitive” works of art, a now-inflammatory word that was used back then to capture ideas of pure form and a kind of elemental innocence, was hugely in vogue. And from that Brancusi, Modigliani, and others found a particular sensation of elongation in these works to be seriously cool. After a very brief attempt at becoming a sculptor, Modigliani returned to painting, which would be his center of attention for the last five years of his life, and when he would produce paintings in his signature style, filled with seriously long and thin figures sporting mask-like faces, just like one of his greatest figures, Nu Couché, or Reclining Nude.

Coming up: the awesomeness of Modigliani’s nudes, and how this particular one reached the upper echelons of the art market. Stay with us. 

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

One of Modigliani’s great achievements was that he successfully modernized two of art history’s most cherished tropes: the nude and the portrait. For his portraits--of which his nudes are often a part-- he developed a strangely uniform style of representation--again, elongated, super-stretched out necks, tiny mouths, and darkened, almond-shaped eyes-- that still allowed for enough individualisation that each still feels like a unique person, even if his or her portrait looks so similar, in so many ways, to a portrait of another person. This was enough to get home some attention, finally, at his first--and only--solo exhibition, which took place in December 1917 at Galerie Berthe Weill, a show organized by Modigliani’s friend and supporter, the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborowski. But not everyone was a huge fan of the artist’s works, and they received some negative attention--and what’s an episode of ArtCurious without some kind of fascinating scandal? So, get this. To entice visitors, Weill, the gallery owner, installed several paintings featuring Modigliani’s seductive nudes in the front windows of the gallery.  I mean, that’s enough to get some attention right there. But located directly across the street from Weill’s gallery was none other than a local police station. And they weren’t too pleased with Modigliani’s nudes for one big reason, a reason that the local police chief evidently shouted about as evidence for his ire, yelling, quote, “Those nudes, they have body hair!” GASP, quel horreur, and pearl-clutching and all that. The police demanded that Weill remove the paintings from display, and Weill, who originally balked at this request, only acquiesced after the knowledge of the scandalous paintings by Amadeo Modigliani had become the talk of the town. Thankfully, for both artist and gallery, this publicity-- which surely must have been expected by Weill-- meant one thing: more gallery foot traffic and more sales of paintings. 

In the same year of the Weill Gallery scandal, Modigliani experienced another personal highlight: he met Jeanne Hébuterne, a fellow artist who studied with Modigliani at an art school known as the Académie Colarossi. The pair quickly fell in love and moved into a studio apartment together, and Hébuterne became the center of Dedo’s life, acting as both common-law wife and muse, as well as the mother of their only child, a daughter also named Jeanne, who was born the following year. But even the professional success and the personal joys that the artist had experienced weren’t enough to overcome his ailing health, which was worsened by both frequent drug use and alcoholism. In January 1920, Amadeo Modigliani died at the age of 35, either from a severe case of pneumonia or from tubercular meningitis. Jeanne followed him to the grave, it seems, so distressed by her love’s death that she committed suicide just two days later. 

By simply looking at Modigliani’s tragic, romantic life and his somewhat minor success as an artist during a period and in a location that was chock-a-block with talent, it’s hard to mentally return to the fact that, in 2015, one of his paintings would garner the second-highest amount of money ever paid at an art auction. What is it about Nu Couché that is special? Returning to our checklist from earlier in this episode about the factors involved in the valuation of works of art, we first should look at the subject matter here and  its importance both in the artist’s oeuvre--or body of work-- and in the art historical canon as whole, as flawed as the idea of “canon” might be. At first glance, Nu Couché is just what its title declares it to be--a nude woman, lying down. It’s an age-old subject in art, and while always in demand by collectors, it’s not an innovation in terms of what it represents. But it is an innovation in how it is presented. Remember that stir, the great controversy surrounding Modigliani’s solo show in 1917. This painting--Nu Couché--was one of those shocking works shown in Berthe Weill’s window that so angered the police and passers-by. Much of this is due to that much-maligned inclusion of body hair on the model, but is most especially targeting the subject’s pubic hair, a subtle yet very candid way to telegraph female sexuality in a frank and unadorned manner.  This candidness gave Modigliani’s nudes a newness, a modernity that aligned him with other avant-garde artists of his time, like Picasso, and even recalled the works of earlier trailblazers like Edouard Manet and Gustave Courbet, whose works we’ve discussed multiple times on this podcast-- for more on Manet, check out episodes 38 and 41, and episode 53 for Courbet. Like the nudes of those artists, Modigliani’s women are devoid of both a false sense of modesty and any mythological context-- things that were present in earlier, more academic depictions of the female nude. It’s a raw, energetic, and satisfying scene, with the woman’s dark, pupil-less eyes locking with our own, and we’re reeled in like we’re stuck in a tractor beam. In short, this work is everything, a synthesis of, as Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie’s Deputy Chairman and Senior International Director of Impressionist and Modern Art in London, states, quote, “the historical avant-garde….and combines Modigliani’s revolutionary capacity to look at faces and bodies with a new and absolutely modern [perspective] that combines geometries of the 19th century with Post-Cubism and particular analysis of Brancusi and African sculptures.” 

As we discovered earlier, the second factor that plays into art valuation is its provenance and exhibition history. Before selling at Christie’s in 2015, Nu Couché changed hands 6 times before being put up for sale by the owner-- not a ton, considering that the work was just shy of century old and that Nu Couché was previously owned by private collectors and thus unavailable on the open market for some time. After its initial exhibition at Galerie Berthe Weill at the behest of Leopold Zborowski, it was then passed along to several wealthy collectors-- and we can trace the provenance, or its ownership history, all the way back. And this is rather important because, as we know, Modigliani was well-known for giving paintings and artworks away for food, alcohol, and art supplies, so it is sometimes very difficult to fully trace the history of ownership of his works. So this intact documented provenance is important for authentication purposes. But it’s not only the ownership history that is important, but also its exhibition history. An essay about this work in the Christie’s sale catalogue lists the numerous exhibitions in which the painting was included in the last century, including in many important institutions or events, such as the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMa, in New York, Paris’s Musée National d’Art Moderne, and both Tate Britain and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Probably most significantly, Nu Couché was included in Ambrogio Ceroni’s Catalogue Raisonné of Modigliani artworks, which was originally published in 1958 and further updated in 1970. A catalogue raisonné can basically be thought of as the essential guide to an artist’s complete works, a listing of everything known to have been created by the artist and still in existence. And while the Ceroni catalogue was never 100% complete due to the fact that Ceroni passed away before he completed it, and even though other catalogues have appeared over time in an attempt to correct or complete the record, the Ceroni is still considered the Modigliani “Bible,” so much so that Mariolina Bassetti, a director at Christie’s, stated at the time of Nu Couché’s 2015 sale that, quote, “if it’s not in Ceroni, then we (Christie’s) doesn’t sell it.” 

Finally, how well an artist is doing in any given art market is the last essential factor of determining the worth of an artwork. And this is deceptively simple on the surface, because not all art and artists remain popular in the art market from one year to the next, because there are fads in art, just like clothing styles or music genres.  For example, Modern art-- that is, art generally from the early-to-mid 20th century, makes the big bucks in the art market today because people think it is cool--and also because of its relative scarcity. There are less and less Picassos around now than there used to be, and fewer opportunities for a really great one to come to market from a private collection--more on that later in this season. It’s a supply-and-demand thing as much as a tastemaking thing. And in 2015, when this fateful auction took place, it was the perfect storm for Modigliani success: an in-demand artist whose works hadn’t been on the auction block for over 30 years, especially not one of his sought-after and ultra-scandalous nudes. Even so, Nu Couché far exceeded what art experts had anticipated, and it crushed the previous record set for Modigliani works at auction, a price of $70.7 million set for a carved stone sculpture, titled Tête, or Head, that sold the year prior at Sotheby’s New York. In just one year, from 2014 to 2015, the sale record for Modigliani went from $70 million to $170 million, a $100 million increase! Let that sink in for a moment. And there you have it: a huge sum for one single work by Amadeo Modigliani-- and while there are other factors involved in such price structures and other complicating elements, because I am definitely over-simplifying things here, it is still these factors that played such a big part in our story today.

Just a small coda before we sign off this week. Interestingly, in 2018, another Modigliani nude (the largest of a series of reclining nudes that the artist completed ) came up for sale at Sotheby’s in New York. This particular piece was listed with a presale estimate of $150 million, a fair price considering the similar sale price of the 2015 record-breaking Nu Couché. But during the auction, it sold after only one bid at a hammer price of $139 million, without associated fees and the buyer’s premium. No other buyers expressed interest, so it was seen as a “disappointment,” a term that might seem laughable to most of us when so much money is meant to exchange hands, but it does go to show you that even the valuation of a work of art by a major 20th century figure isn’t always stable--or expected, or even understandable to those both in the art world and outside of it.

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Jordan McDonough. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com.   The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com. 

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us going, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod. 

Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in the most expensive works ever sold at auction.