Somehow a Past: The Autobiography of Marsden Hartley Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Somehow a Past: The Autobiography of Marsden Hartley Book

This tender book, carefully edited by Susan Elizabeth Ryan, was chosen from among six handwritten manuscripts of the same title by the prolific American modernist painter and writer Marsden Hartley. Hartley "presents the scholar with an untidy field of inquiry," Ryan writes gently. Partly inspired by his friend Gertrude Stein's "autobiography" of Alice B. Toklas, it tells the story of a life at the center of the early modernist art movement in America, chiefly among the Alfred Stieglitz crowd. For this book, Ryan, in an extensive introduction, fills in many blanks, such as Hartley's homosexuality and the extreme sadness of his childhood after his mother's death when he was 8. The main text is a model of intellectual inquiry, self-doubt, and frequently mordant observations: "The summer in Paris was gay and amusing--there is always one summer in Paris when it is that." Or, "O, the wild rough gaiety of the Marseillaises when they are not murdering and thieving." --Margaret MoormanRead More

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    "Hartley's diffident and elusive title does not convey the energy, charm and sheer pleasure of this artist's account of his life and travels. . . . Marsden Hartley is an extraordinary witness to his age. The book joins a rich body of 'witness' literature left us by Hartley's friends and conspirators in the 'modern movement' like Gertrude Stein, Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle, Mabel Dodge and Ernest Hemingway. One of the few painters turned writer, Hartley has given us an intensely visual record of a time he called a 'cross 'tween a circus and a sacred affair,' when everything was possible, and the artist's goal was simply to remake the world." -- Julie Martin, The New York Times Book Review

    Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) is best known as an American modernist and pioneering artist of the early twentieth century. But he was also a prolific writer who published dozens of essays and reviews and several volumes of poetry and prose. The autobiographical account of his life is the most revealing document he left about his personal life and relationships--both for its disclosures and omissions--but has never been published before. Somehow a Past is compelling both as historical document and as personal narrative. Hartley knew nearly every figure of the international avant-garde in his day and unfolds his life largely through a chain of personal encounters. His traffic with such major literary and artistic figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Vasili Kandinski, Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge, Eugene O'Neill, Robert McAlmon, and Charles Demuth is recorded, as are his travels both domestic and foreign.

  • 0262581639
  • 9780262581639
  • M Hartley
  • 8 April 1998
  • MIT Press
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 246
  • New edition
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