Publisher Description

Charles Demuth is widely recognized as one of the most significant American modernists. His precisionist cityscapes, exquisite flowers, and free-wheeling watercolors of vaudeville performers, homosexual bathhouses, and cabaret scenes hang in many of the country's most prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Art Institute of Chicago, and in Demuth's Lancaster, Pennsylvania, family residence, now home of the Demuth Foundation. At a time when many American artists remained tied to Europe, Demuth "Americanized" European modernism. This collection of 155 of his letters offers valuable views of the arts and letters colonies in Provincetown, New York, and Paris. Besides offering information on Demuth's own works, the letters also shed light on the output of his contemporaries, as well as references to their trips, liaisons, and idiosyncrasies.Demuth numbered among his correspondents some of the most famous artists and writers of his time, inluding Georgia O'Keeffe, Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, and William Carlos Williams.In his travels in the United States and abroad, he encountered many other talented contemporaries: Peggy Bacon, Muriel Draper, Marcel Duchamp, the Stettheimer sisters, artists and writers, patrons, and gallery owners. Whether he is offering to pick up a copy of Joyce's Ulysses for Eugene O'Neill or trying to convince Georgia O'Keeffe to decorate his music room ("just allow that red and yellow 'canna' one to spread until it fills the room"), Demuth is always in the thick of art and literary life. Flamboyant in attire but descreet in his homosexuality, Demuth also reveals in his letters the life of a talented homosexual in the teens and twenties. With his best friends Robert Locher and Marsden Hartley, he circulated through the art colonies of Greenwich Village, Provincetown, and Paris, meeting everyone.The book also contains reprints of some short appraisals of Demuth and his work that were published during his lifetime, long out of print, including pieces by A. E. Gallatin, Angela E. Hagen, Marsden Hartley, Helen Henderson, Henry McBride, Carl Van Vechten, Rita Wells, and Willard Huntington Wright.Author note: Bruce Kellner is Emeritus Professor of English, Millersville University, and a member of the Demuth Foundation Board of Directors. He is the author or editor of 10 other books.

Notes

The correspondence of a celebrated 1920s artist with his famous contemporaries

Author Biography

Bruce Kellner is Emeritus Professor of English, Millersville University, and a member of the Demuth Foundation Board of Directors. He is the author or editor of 10 other books.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction A Note on Editing The Letters An Appreciative Appendix What Is Happenings in the World of Art * Henry McBride Demuth * Henry McBride The Underground Search for Higher Moralities * Henry McBride Demuth * Willard Huntington Wright from Art and Artists in Review * Helen Henderson from Florine Stettheimer and Charles Demuth * Carl Van Vechten from American Water-Colourists * A. E. Gallatin Demuth * Henry McBride Charles Demuth * A. E. Gallatin Water-Colours by Charles Demuth * Henry McBride Demuth Watercolors and Oils at "An American Place" * Angela E. Hagen Pen Portraits: Charles Demuth: Artists * Rita Wellman from Farewell, Charles * Marsden Hartley Demuth Memorial Exhibition * Henry McBride INDEX

Review

"Editor Bruce Kellner, an emeritus professor of English at Pennsylvania's Millersville University, provides a lucid introduction to Demuth's life and to his work: this 'fashionably high-stepping strutter' may be in for a big, deserved revival." --Publishers Weekly

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The correspondence of a celebrated 1920s artist with his famous contemporaries

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The correspondence of a celebrated 1920s artist with his famous contemporaries

Review Quote

"Editor Bruce Kellner, an emeritus professor of English at Pennsylvania's Millersville University, provides a lucid introduction to Demuth's life and to his work: this 'fashionably high-stepping strutter' may be in for a big, deserved revival." -Publishers Weekly

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The correspondence of a celebrated 1920s artist with his famous contemporaries

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