University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 eISBN: 978-0-299-29868-5 | Cloth: 978-0-299-29860-9 Library of Congress Classification ND237.B872L36 2015 Dewey Decimal Classification 759.13
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The artistic achievements of Romaine Brooks (1874–1970), both as a major expatriate American painter and as a formative innovator in the decorative arts, have long been overshadowed by her fifty-year relationship with writer Natalie Barney and a reputation as a fiercely independent, aloof heiress who associated with fascists in the 1930s. In Romaine Brooks: A Life, art historian Cassandra Langer provides a richer, deeper portrait of Brooks's aesthetics and experimentation as an artist—and of her entire life, from her chaotic, traumatic childhood to the enigmatic decades after World War II, when she produced very little art. This provocative, lively biography takes aim at many myths about Brooks and her friends, lovers, and the subjects of her portraits, revealing a woman of wit and passion who overcame enormous personal and societal challenges to become an extraordinary artist and create a life on her own terms.
Romaine Brooks: A Life introduces much fresh information from Langer's decades of research on Brooks and establishes this groundbreaking artist's centrality to feminism and contemporary sexual politics as well as to visual culture.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Cassandra Langer is an art historian, critic, and appraiser. She is the author and editor of several books, including New Feminist Criticisms: Art, Identity, Action. She lives in New York and blogs at cassandralanger.com.
REVIEWS
"Langer makes clear that Romaine Brooks was an artist of unusual courage and originality, tracing her development not only as an artist, but as a woman artist and a boldly lesbian artist. This biography includes fascinating material on the many talented, independent, and liberated women in Paris in the 1920s, with Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks at the center of that milieu." —Jerry Rosco, author of Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography
"Cassandra Langer insightfully recounts the life of Romaine Brooks, including the sources of her creativity and blocks to that creativity in later life, her bigotry, and her contributions to twentieth-century British, merican, and French culture. This readable, vivid biography provides social and general historical context for Brooks's life, art, and writings, as well as incisive psychological analysis of her motives."—Betsy Draine, author of Substance under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris Lessing
“Art historian Langer is zealous and exacting as she seeks to fully portray her heretofore too-little-known subject, . . . addressing the complexities and contradictions of Brooks’s life and celebrating the courage and power of her meticulously composed paintings. . . . Langer sensitively grapples with Brooks’s elitism, bigotry, and fascist tendencies while avidly reclaiming this ‘fascinating and controversial’ artist’s elegant and evocative, haunted and defiant art in praise of audacious women.”—Booklist, *starred review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Art Critic's Love Affair
1 A Strange Childhood: 1874–1894
2 A Singular Woman: 1895–1904
3 Dangerous Liaisons: 1905–1912
4 World in Flames: 1913–1916
5 Love Stories: 1916–1934
6 Fashioning Romaine: 1934–1938
7 More Modernisms: 1938
8 Fallen Idols: 1939–1945
9 After the Fall: 1945–1970
Conclusion: The Phoenix
Chronology
Glossary of Names
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 eISBN: 978-0-299-29868-5 Cloth: 978-0-299-29860-9
The artistic achievements of Romaine Brooks (1874–1970), both as a major expatriate American painter and as a formative innovator in the decorative arts, have long been overshadowed by her fifty-year relationship with writer Natalie Barney and a reputation as a fiercely independent, aloof heiress who associated with fascists in the 1930s. In Romaine Brooks: A Life, art historian Cassandra Langer provides a richer, deeper portrait of Brooks's aesthetics and experimentation as an artist—and of her entire life, from her chaotic, traumatic childhood to the enigmatic decades after World War II, when she produced very little art. This provocative, lively biography takes aim at many myths about Brooks and her friends, lovers, and the subjects of her portraits, revealing a woman of wit and passion who overcame enormous personal and societal challenges to become an extraordinary artist and create a life on her own terms.
Romaine Brooks: A Life introduces much fresh information from Langer's decades of research on Brooks and establishes this groundbreaking artist's centrality to feminism and contemporary sexual politics as well as to visual culture.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Cassandra Langer is an art historian, critic, and appraiser. She is the author and editor of several books, including New Feminist Criticisms: Art, Identity, Action. She lives in New York and blogs at cassandralanger.com.
REVIEWS
"Langer makes clear that Romaine Brooks was an artist of unusual courage and originality, tracing her development not only as an artist, but as a woman artist and a boldly lesbian artist. This biography includes fascinating material on the many talented, independent, and liberated women in Paris in the 1920s, with Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks at the center of that milieu." —Jerry Rosco, author of Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography
"Cassandra Langer insightfully recounts the life of Romaine Brooks, including the sources of her creativity and blocks to that creativity in later life, her bigotry, and her contributions to twentieth-century British, merican, and French culture. This readable, vivid biography provides social and general historical context for Brooks's life, art, and writings, as well as incisive psychological analysis of her motives."—Betsy Draine, author of Substance under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris Lessing
“Art historian Langer is zealous and exacting as she seeks to fully portray her heretofore too-little-known subject, . . . addressing the complexities and contradictions of Brooks’s life and celebrating the courage and power of her meticulously composed paintings. . . . Langer sensitively grapples with Brooks’s elitism, bigotry, and fascist tendencies while avidly reclaiming this ‘fascinating and controversial’ artist’s elegant and evocative, haunted and defiant art in praise of audacious women.”—Booklist, *starred review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Art Critic's Love Affair
1 A Strange Childhood: 1874–1894
2 A Singular Woman: 1895–1904
3 Dangerous Liaisons: 1905–1912
4 World in Flames: 1913–1916
5 Love Stories: 1916–1934
6 Fashioning Romaine: 1934–1938
7 More Modernisms: 1938
8 Fallen Idols: 1939–1945
9 After the Fall: 1945–1970
Conclusion: The Phoenix
Chronology
Glossary of Names
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE