This season's big artist biography

In case you've somehow missed it, this season's "big artist biography"* is now out, Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest. Generally, and perhaps unsurprisingly given Secrest's rich body of work (including her 1979 book on collector and connoisseur Bernard Berenson, which is terrific) this new work is being generally well received, and for Modigliani or artist biography fans, seems well worth a read.

There are plenty of reviews to read as well, but Christopher Benfey in Slate captures the main critical points of many of them: "On the whole, Secrest seems more comfortable with details of Modigliani's life than with his art … But Secrest's primary aim is not a fresh take on Modigliani's art. Instead, she wishes to destroy, once and for all, what she calls the "legend" of his life." And ultimately, "it's not from the realm of legend that she wants to rescue Modigliani. She just wants a different legend, one that reflects better on the man she rightly admires."

Lance Esplund in the Wall Street Journal, is perhaps most critical of the biography, and more particularly of Modigliani's worthiness as a subject, concluding: "Unfortunately, Modigliani was at the center of one of the most inventive and turbulent periods in European art and history. Much more interesting things were happening in the lives and work of other artists, and in the city of Paris and the world at large, than in the life and art of Modigliani."

And for a different take, check out Brian Boucher's interview with Secrest in Art in America.

* Seemingly every spring and fall, Knopf publishes a single, big, artist biography that, like many of its books, gets the full-court press of book reviews and reading attention (Evans' Grant Wood last season, Wullschläger's Chagall not too long before that). We don't begrudge Knopf or the biographers for it, and many of the books have been extremely terrific (Richardson's Picasso, Spurling's Matisse) but still, it's a strange pattern.