Carl
Van Vechten (June 17, 1880 –
December 21, 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who
was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and
the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as
well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography
and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for
most of his adult life, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over
his lifetime. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was
the youngest child of Charles Duane Van Vechten and Ada Amanda Van Vechten (née Fitch) Both
of his parents were well educated. His father was a wealthy and prominent
banker. His mother established the Cedar Rapids Public Library and
had great musical talent.[4] As a child, Van Vechten developed a passion for
music and theatre. He graduated from Washington High
School in 1898. After high school, Van Vechten was eager to
take the next steps in his life, but found it difficult to pursue his passions
in Iowa. He described his hometown as "that unloved town". To advance
his education, he decided in 1899 to study at the University of Chicago, where
he studied a variety of topics including music, art and opera. As a student, he
became increasingly interested in writing and wrote for the college newspaper,
the University of Chicago Weekly. After graduating from college in
1903, Van Vechten accepted a job as a columnist for the Chicago American. In his column "The Chaperone",
Van Vechten covered many different topics through a style of
semi-autobiographical gossip and criticism. During his time with the Chicago
American, he was occasionally asked to include photographs with his column.
This was the first time he was thought to have experimented with photography,
which later became one of his greatest passions. Van Vechten was fired from his
position with the Chicago American because of what was
described as an elaborate and complicated style of writing. Some described his
contributions to the paper as "lowering the tone of the Hearst papers". In
1906, he moved to New York City. He was hired as the assistant music critic
at The New York Times. His
interest in opera had him take a leave of absence from the paper in 1907 to
travel to Europe and explore opera. While in England, he married Anna Snyder,
his long-time friend from Cedar Rapids. He returned to his job at The
New York Times in 1909, where he became the first American critic
of modern dance. Under the leadership of Van
Vechten's social mentor Mabel Dodge Luhan, he became engrossed in avant-garde art.
This was an innovative type of art which explores new styles or subject matters
and is thought to be well ahead of other art in terms of technique, subject
matter, and application. He began to frequently attend groundbreaking musical
premieres at the time when Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and Loie Fuller were performing in New York City. He also
attended premieres in Paris where he met American author and poet Gertrude Stein in 1913. He became a devoted friend and champion of
Stein and was considered to be one of Stein's most enthusiastic fans. They
continued corresponding for the remainder of Stein's life, and, at her death,
she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor; he helped to bring into print her
unpublished writings. A collection of the letters between Van Vechten and
Stein has been published. Van Vechten wrote a piece called "How
to Read Gertrude Stein" for the arts magazine The Trend. In
his piece, Van Vechten attempted to demystify Stein and bring clarity to her
works. Van Vechten came to the conclusion that Stein can be best understood
when one has been guided through her work by an "expert insider". He
writes that "special writers require special readers". The
marriage to Anna Snyder ended in divorce in 1912, and he wed actress Fania Marinoff in 1914. Van Vechten and Marinoff were known for
ignoring the social separation of races during the times and for inviting
blacks to their home for social gatherings. They were also known to attend
public gatherings for black people and to visit black friends in their homes. Although
Van Vechten's marriage to his wife Fania Marinoff lasted for 50 years, they
often had arguments about Van Vechten's affairs with men. Van Vechten was known to have romantic and
sexual relationships with men, especially Mark Lutz. Lutz (1901–1968) grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and
was introduced to Van Vechten by Hunter Stagg in
New York in 1931. Lutz was a model for some of Van Vechten's earliest
experiments with photography. The friendship lasted until Van Vechten's death.
At Lutz's death, as per his wishes, the correspondence with Van Vechten,
amounting to 10,000 letters, was destroyed. Lutz donated his collection of Van
Vechten's photographs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Several
books of Van Vechten's essays on various subjects, such as music and
literature, were published between 1915 and 1920, and Van Vechten also served
as an informal scout for the newly formed Alfred A. Knopf. Between 1922 and 1930 Knopf published seven
novels by him, starting with Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works and
ending with Parties. His sexuality is most clearly reflected in his
intensely homoerotic portraits of working-class men. As an appreciator of the
arts, Van Vechten was extremely intrigued by the explosion of creativity which
was occurring in Harlem. He was drawn towards the tolerance of Harlem society
and the excitement it generated among black writers and artists. He also felt
most accepted there as a gay man. Van Vechten promoted many of the major
figures of the Harlem Renaissance,
including Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman. Van Vechten's controversial novel Nigger Heaven was published in 1926. His essay "Negro
Blues Singers" was published in Vanity Fair in
1926. Biographer Edward White suggests Van Vechten was
convinced that negro culture was the essence of America.
Van Vechten played a critical role in the Harlem Renaissance and helped
to bring greater clarity to the African-American movement. However, for a long
time he was also seen as a very controversial figure. In Van Vechten's early
writings, he claimed that black people were born to be entertainers and
sexually "free". In other words, he believed that black people should
be free to explore their sexuality and singers should follow their natural
talents such as jazz, spirituals and blues. Van Vechten wrote about his
experiences of attending a Bessie Smith concert at the Orpheum Theatre in Newark, New Jersey, in
1925. In Harlem, Van Vechten often attended opera and cabarets. He was credited
for the surge in white interest in Harlem nightlife and culture as well as
involved in helping well-respected writers such as Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen to find publishers for their early works. In
2001, Emily Bernard published "Remember Me to Harlem". This was a
collection of letters which documented the long friendship between Van Vechten
and Langston Hughes, who publicly defended Nigger Heaven. Bernard's
book Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black
and White explores the messy and uncomfortable realities of race, and
the complicated tangle of black and white in America. His older brother Ralph
Van Vechten died on June 28, 1927; when Ralph's widow Fannie died in 1928, Van
Vechten inherited $1 million invested in a trust fund, which was unaffected by the stock market crash of
1929 and provided financial support for Carl and Fania. By the start of the
1930s and at the age of 50, Van Vechten was finished with writing and took up
photography, using his apartment at 150 West 55th Street as a studio, where he
photographed many notable people. After the 1930s Van Vechten published little
writing, though he continued writing letters to many correspondents. Van Vechten
died in 1964 at the age of 84 in New York City. His ashes were scattered over
the Shakespeare garden in Central Park. He was the subject of a 1968 biography by Bruce
Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, as well
as Edward White's 2014 biography, The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and
the Birth of Modern America.