long overdue update

For nearly two years now(!) the “Queer Modernisms?” tab at the top of this blog has led to a blank page with “IN PROGRESS” listed at the top.

That situation has now changed–it’s definitely still a work in progress, but take a look!

Book Review: ECCENTRIC MODERNISMS by Tirza True Latimer

Tirza True Latimer’s most recent monograph is a slim yet substantial examination of a “network of enterprising outliers” that profoundly influenced art and culture making in the first half of the twentieth century, but have been generally been omitted from most accounts of modernism. But “why,” as she asks in the opening lines of the introduction, “do their names no longer strike a chord?”

Of course, this is a question and topic familiar to anybody who has spent any amount of time reading through this blog, so it is perhaps no surprise that Eccentric Modernisms deals with exactly the same type of material featured here: the communities of transatlantic queer modernist artists that established social networks to support their artistic endeavors.

Rather than launching a project of recuperation or attempting to “fix” established historical discourses, however, Latimer simply characterizes her book as “three case studies,” devoting a chapter each to Dix Portraits, a collaborative and lavishly produced publication which featured poems by Gertrude Stein and artwork by five of her then-current protégés, the mounting of the Stein and Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts in 1934, and View Magazine, the innovative art journal edited by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler during the 1940’s. The decision to direct all focus solely on three specific examples of “collectively produced art publications, performances, and ephemera” proves to be an elegant one in its dexterity and concision, with Latimer providing evocative details and minutiae to tacitly state the case for her larger arguments.

But why eccentric modernisms, as opposed to any number of other modifiers—queer, bad, pop, improper, impossible, cosmopolitan, and so many others—that been attached to modernism in recent years? Latimer admits that “the distinction between queer and eccentric may not matter,” though it serves as a useful differentiation from other synonyms, such as marginality (4). In a conversation that aired on Yale University Radio, I was interested to find out that Latimer had actually started out using “queer modernisms,” but ultimately decided that for this project “queer” wasn’t intended to be “necessarily attached to a specific notion of sexuality,” but was instead a “more capacious term.” The distinction makes sense within the context of Latimer’s overall argument, even as it also reaffirms why I continue to use “queer modernisms” in my own work (I do want to retain some kind of basis in sexual orientation and/or behavior).

It was thrilling—and sometimes with a twinge of jealousy, I admit—to read through Latimer’s monograph, as she explores many of the exact same topics that I’m working through in my thesis: the difficulties of retrospectively applied terms and categories, the appeal of queer artistic networks, the motivation behind collaborative art making, the pleasures and perils of Gertrude Stein’s patronage, the nature of Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s artistic relationship, how and why so many things—even things which seem critically important—become “lost,” as well as the most effective strategies for recovering them. I suspect much that is here will find its way in one form or another in my own thesis, whether directly or conceptually. Latimer has been at the forefront of so much of the key scholarship of queer modernism (particularly her books dealing with lesbian expatriatism, the “modern woman,” and Stein’s enduring and multifaceted influence on modernism), and I suspect that Eccentric Modernisms is opening up space for a lot more work on these topics—which hopefully includes my own.

Eccentric Modernisms is available for purchase through the University of California Press.

View cover designed by Joseph Cornell, January 1943

Works Cited:

Latimer, Tirza True. Eccentric Modernisms: Making Differences in the History of American Art. Berkeley: U of California, 2016. Print.

What’s Here/Queer/Modernist: Weekly Reads #2

Here’s what here/queer/modernist out in the world [wide web]:

Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, & Alice B. Toklas, January 4, 1935.

Well, it certainly seems to have been a very Carl Van Vechten week. Not everyone might be pleased with the latest Edward White biography, but it has certainly seemed to spark a lot of reinterest in his life and his work. Here’s a rundown of some CVV things that appeared this last week:

Most substantial was White’s long essay for The Paris Review, which specifically focuses on his relationship with Gertrude Stein: “Stein knew how crucial Van Vechten was to her career—not merely in the practical aspects of getting her work into print, read, and discussed, but in helping create and disseminate the mythology that surrounds her name. ‘I always wanted to be historical, almost from a baby on,’ Stein freely admitted toward the end of her life. ‘Carl was one of the earliest ones that made me be certain that I was going to be.’”

Two things I never expected to have to write in the same sentence: Carl Van Vechten made an appearance on Craigslist this last week. Here in San Francisco first edition copies of Music and Bad Manners (1916) and Interpreters and Interpretations (1917), owned by the same family for nearly a century, showed up on the popular classifieds website. Place in the “if I had a spare $600 just lying around…” file.

“Carl Van Vechten: Photographer to the Stars” is an exhibition opening this week at Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, the local museum of CVV’s hometown. It features a collection of photographs that CVV himself donated to the museum in 1946 and which was later augmented by his estate, and runs through September 7.

This spotlight topic at glbtq.org this month is the Harlem Renaissance, which features a number of queer modernist luminaries, including Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Countee Cullen, and, of course Van Vechten himself. Why Richard Bruce Nugent, the most overtly out of this circle doesn’t have his own page at this point, however, remains something of a mystery.

ALSO:

City Light Books will be publishing a 50th anniversary edition of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, which was first published in 1964 as part of the publisher’s famous Pocket Poet Series. The new edition will feature a forward by O’Hara’s friend, the poet John Ashbury. The also point to a feature over at The Atlantic regarding the collection, as well as a reading of the entire book taking place in New York City on June 11.

Modernist Cultures has just released their May 2014 issue, with a focus on modernism and dance. Featuring Nijinsky (of course), Josephine Baker, Pavlova, Massine, etc, etc.–can’t wait to dive into this! (Not sure what the access issues are, email me if you’re having issues.)

An essay titled “Kleist’s Cycle of Consciousness: Modeling Identity in Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood” by Karen Lively has been posted by The California Journal of Women Writers, a publication I clearly need to start paying attention to.

What did I miss? Please let me know!