I'm Valerie Steele the director
of the museum at FIT welcome to the
museum's fashion culture program tonight
it's our pleasure to have Cassandra
Langer present her book on Romaine
Brooks a life an art historian and
critic Sandy became the accidental
biographer of Romaine Brooks when a
search to uncover the artist's
aesthetic led her to rethink the flawed
narrative of Brook's life after decades
of research her work led to the
discovery of authentic source material
that had never before been translated
from the original French and these
discoveries turn history on its head to
reveal a very different Brooks from the
dark subversive and antisocial image
painted by previous biographers now
after the presentation we'll have a book
signing right upstairs in the
registration area so please join me in
welcoming Cassandra Langer
thank you very much for that lovely
introduction it's such an honor to be
invited by Valerie to participate in the
Fashion Institute of Technology series I
have a longtime relationship with an old
friend of mine Richard Martin who was
here at one time so I have a fondness
for Fashion Institute I want to talk
tonight about the story of Romaine Brooks
and her circle their role in shaping a
vibrant culture in Paris in the first
decades of the 20th century on the
screen you see Romaine as a young woman
around 1914 and later on 1923 with her
iconic portrait that is so arresting
for so many people
Romaine Brooks painted celebrities and
hung out with aristocrats so my
question is why don't we know more about
her life and art well there are many
reasons for this primary among them is
the hidden nature of Brooks's own
ambivalence about her privacy and being
famous many people have asked me what
drew me to Romaine Brooks like many of
you sitting here in the audience today I
was a young graduate student studying
art history and criticism at New York
University in 1971 seems like a long
time away now but it's fresh in my
memory I accidentally encountered Romaine
Brooks's great self-portrait of 1923
which you see on the screen at the
Whitney Museum of American Art it was a
first showing of this much neglected
American artist who had achieved
international fame during the first
decades of the 20th century my encounter
with Brooks sent me on a life's quest a
40-year quest actually in the end to
find the woman behind the mask Romaine
Brooks had created for public
consumption to say I was swept away by
the graphic course of Romaine Brooks
self-portrait of 1923 would be an
understatement it pulled me in in a way
nothing else I'd ever seen had it was
absolute and mysterious the portrait
seemed to return my gaze from under
heavy half-open fitted eyes accentuated
by her white makeup red lipstick and her
brilliant dark gaze it was and is an
imposing display of heroic reserve that
thrilled me and thrilled many of today's
audiences
she had crowned herself with a Brummell
style top hat the arching brim casting a
shadow over the secretive captivating
glance it was then in those moments that
she changed my life and started me on
this lifelong journey in the course of
my research I discovered that Romaine and
her longtime lover Nathalie Barney you
see here on the right and one of her
characteristic poses had practically
invented sapphic chic
they met in October of 1916 although the
earlier biography biographies say 1915
but my research reveals it actually was
1916 a style that is Oh sexy edgy and
timeless I think are the best ways to
describe sapphic chic it is not as
English social historian Laura Dunn has
noted a matter of cross-dressing or of
making a fashion statement rather it is
about self-expression and character and
I think this is what underscores most of
Romaine Brooks's work it's very clear
that she was not so interested in the
notion of cross-dressing as in fashion
itself and in tailoring itself at that
time to express herself it was a
statement of style that still resonates
with today's women young and old
as you can see here Lady Edith best one
of the upper crust and of course
Radcliffe Hall and Una lady Troubridge
who sport the fashion of the day you see here
Radcliffe in a man tailored
suit it's very unlike what Romaine
designed for herself once she was in
charge of her fortune so what does
sapphic chic look like it's slim sleek
tailored connotating a
youthful vitality that American European
and a new crop of Asian designers
find inspiring it's timeless as we can
see here and it's also androgynous
anyone can wear it who has a sense of
style Marlena wore it and we see here
Kristen Stewart wears it very well in
both formulations now a little
background about Romaine as audrey
hepburn famously said it's always good
to have Paris
so Paris it's always a good idea for any
of us I certainly love going and you can
see that the fundamental draw of Paris
was something that appealed to many
Americans during this period what is
most remarkable about Romaine and her
friends is that their generous patronage
of writers poets musicians artists
designers and performance made a vibrant
cultural scene possible because of their
inherited wealth this is something that
has not been widely known just imagine
French high art was funded by American
industrial dollars here we see an
example of one of those patrons
winnaretta singer in a portrait which is
lost unfortunately if anybody knows of
its whereabouts I'd love to hear about
it
winnaretta became lovers with Romaine around
1907 1908 we're not quite sure we think
they met in England and winnaretta may
have been the reason that Romaine moved
to Paris in 1905 we're not sure for both
the young Romaine Brooks and her longtime
lover who she met in October of 1916 and
formed a lifelong relationship Nathalie
Barney coming of age in Paris at the
turn of the century was a very good idea
between 1870 and 1925 Paris emerged as a
city of great expectation and the
cultural capital of Europe at the heart
of the Cultural Revolution stood the
ballet russe de monte carlo notde
monte-carlo but the Ballet Russe under
the direction of the formidable Sergei
Diaghilev and here I'm showing you a
slide of Diaghilev in one of the sets by
Bakst that made Paris absolutely go wild
for their productions these productions
stirred an enormous interest within the
artistic community and set the aesthetic
tone of the era such grand theatrical
ventures required enormous sums of money
so it was a good thing that people like
winnaretta and Romaine and Natalie were
willing to kick in those sums in order
to support the scores of artists and
artisans who worked on costumes and sets
including Bakst and Nicolas Warwick for
some of you may not know there is the
Rorick Museum here in New York it's a
little gem and you should visit it if
you get a chance Bakst's influence on the
designers of the era cannot be
understated when we look at exemplars of
French culture for instance Proust and
his muse the countess Elisabeth Greffuhle
she was one of the most fashionable
women of the era related to Romaine
Brooks and Nathalie Barney through their
partnership actually and was related to
the countess through her brothers marriage to her only daughter you will
have an opportunity as Valerie no doubt
will inform you to experience her
fashion sense yourselves this fall when
an exhibition of her wardrobe travels
right here to Fashion Institute of
Technology Elisabeth was a clotheshorse
who spent a fortune on her wardrobe and
dazzled Parisian high society Bakst's
creations may have inspired a younger
generation but they were being adopted I
think somewhat less enthusiastically and
the old gods of fashion such as Worth
who we see here in this slide in a
beautiful opera cape just an
extraordinary piece and then younger
women who were part of the fashionable
set who would attend these affairs work
continued to glorify the Parisian and
American upper classes but gowns like
this soon gave way to fashions that were
much more influenced by the ballet russe
among those who now formed Romaine's circle
one may mention Anna de Noailles who was a
well-known poet at that time I
apologize for the pixelation in the
slides but we did the best we could on
the right you'll see an example of
Romaine's early sketching style about I think 1908 or so at any
rate when you consider Romaine and her
circle you have to look at the cream of
Parisian society both bohemian and
otherwise Romaine also enjoyed the
company of many of the tastemakers of
the time she painted Cocteau who was at
that time just coming up and hadn't
become the Cocteau we know today she had
a flat overlooking the Eiffel Tower and
that's how she painted him essentially
this was part of a larger painting at
one time but she became disgusted with
him because of his
drug habit at a later period and cut
this this painting in half there were
two young women also on the balcony it
is thought that this portion of the
painting is lost and it may have been
her sister and a friend so all we have
is this wonderful painting of Cocteau
she also became friends and was able to
garner the patronage of Robert de
montesquiou who was the model for Proust's
Charlus in his famous novel series and so
we have her with the absolute shapers of
culture in Paris at that time she also
became involved with Renee who was known
at that time as Paula basically and she
she was Renée Vivien although that was
not her real name it was Pauline
Tarn at that time she also dressed in
boyish fashions in this case knee
breeches and so on and made a statement
of again defying the basic complacency if
you will of the time and the notion of
what women should wear on the right hand
side as you can see Ida Rubenstein with
her famous Panther cub
this was the Panther cub that's so
scared Diagala that he jumped up on the
cocktail table to get away from it if
you can imagine she had a menagerie of
animals she flew planes and she also
hunted in Africa and was bisexual
she became lovers with Romaine about 1909
1910 we're not quite sure of the date of
course the style that Romaine and these
women embodied was very much a classical
kind of tailored style we see Marlene
Dietrich here wearing it on the left and
Ciara today so
it spans the ages and I think for good
reason when we think about our own
contemporary styles Vivien made
cross-dressing chic as did Marlene and
it is a statement that still influences
us today in contemporary fashion the
reigning diva of the moment Ida
Rubenstein who I just showed you a very
bad postcard of what was a white Jewish
Russian who embodied the new woman of
the 20th century and we see Ida here in
a composite of the many roles that she
played with the ballet russe and further
on she became a fashion icon so to speak
she was celebrated globally and in
paintings drawings and photographs as
well as popular magazines and newspapers
of the day so had quite an impact on the
fashion scene around the turn of the
century and through the 1920s she
changed the overall look of women's
fashions and that continues today in
various revivals and in contemporary
styles as we can see here the whole
notion of the Turkish trouser the notion
of the lampshade dress and so on
continue into Saint Laurent and many
other designers from the 60s on Paris
had become a modern Babylon where new
frankness and forthrightness about
sexuality was emerging including for
women we can see here all the various
styles that Romaine adopted throughout
her career up until 1935 45 in this
famous on the upper my left corner Carl
Van Vechten photograph of her both she
and Natalie liked playing roles
basically and playing with fashion so
you can see one aspect of this in her
jockey costume here with Natalie
but first I think we need to find out a
little bit about romaine who was romaine
Brooks the question is up for grabs
prior to my book because the general
impression of romaine that had been
given by her first biographer was that
she was this humorless damaged basically
curmudgeony kind of personality who
stopped painting in the 1930s which
wasn't true but in any rate that was all
the research that was done at that time
I discovered about three years ago
through a relationship with a person who
contacted me on Facebook of all things
and said I think I can help you out
she was the translator of a French
biography of Lily de Gramont and what
happened essentially because people
asked me was that Lily de Gramont who was
princess of the blood of France
essentially had a number of letters
the usual trunks in the Attic kind of
thing and although her immediate family
at the time she was related to the
Rothschilds didn't wish to have anybody
know about their gay aunt that has
changed and shame-based families have
come to the fore and particularly the
grandchildren who thought well that's
cool auntie what's a lesbian that's not
a big deal and so they allowed this
researcher Francesco Rappidzini to go
up to the attic and go through the
letters and in those letters was the
other life of Romaine Brooks attested to
by Lily's referring to the time that
Brooks met Natalie Barney because of
Natalie Barney and Lily were lovers for
nine years and when she met Brooks that
is Natalie it became a big to-do and
they had a lot of resolving to do but
they did and they ended up in a
polyamorous
relationship the three of them so we had
no knowledge of any of this we didn't
know she had a personal life we thought
she was so damaged she'd never be able
to relate to anybody much less be a
funny witty really interesting person to
be involved with at any rate let's talk
a little bit about romaine she was born
with a silver spoon in her mouth in a
hotel room in Rome and here we see her
family Brooks had a gothic upbringing
and her mother was the main culprit in
in of this we see Brooks on her
mother's lap and we see her brother who
had mental problems in fact the family
had mental problems the father
disappeared very early on he was a
Goddard and that's where her original
maiden name comes from he was alcoholic
and her mother Ella got rid of him by
pensioning him off with some money basically
so he disappears before Brooks is
one-year-old and the reason for her
gothic childhood was mainly because her
mother was mad she had a mad cousin who
lived in the Attic the woman in the
Attic who ended up committing suicide
and the child witnessed it which was not
helpful at all and so she always had a
lifelong fear that she herself might go
crazy because there was mental illness
in the family her mother was pretty
abusive actually and cruel to her and
her brother became progressively more
insane Henry  St. Mar he was blond
the mother was practically in love with
him and as a child she really had a very
hard time and you can see in her
drawings which are precursors to
surrealism although nobody gives her the
credit for it and they all claim she was
a symbolist witch she was not she
encompassed these in her memoir in the
1930s while laid up in bed with a a lame
leg she did a series of drawings one of
these drawings which I'm showing
here which I refer to as the huddled
figure shows herself here protected by
her crazy brother and menaced by a
number of figures symbolizing her mother
and the whole of her abusive childhood
essentially I mean I it's in the book
I've written about the many incidences
that she documents of what went on in
her family what we do know is that as a
child she had been beaten humiliated
abandoned rejected by her mother who as
I said was in love with her brother and
was traipsing all over Europe seeking a
cure for his madness which only got
worse and worse
 St. Mar was both Romaine's protector and
most likely a sexually abused her she
wrote about that briefly although not
openly only intimating it in the 1930s
in a London Journal consequently she
became a very mistrustful child on the
right I'm showing you the chateau
Grimaldi which was where her mother
lived with  St. Mar she had a floor on
the top of the of the residence
basically she had been in Catholic
school her mother had been trying to
force her into becoming a nun of all
things she she dissolved a bunch of
matchbooks essentially and made a
sulphur drink and they tried to commit
suicide of course it didn't work but she
got very ill and the nuns thought she
was a devil child so they decided to
send her back home and this is where she
ended up the the interior was quite
horrible and I'll go into in a little
while it accounts for how she became an
interior decorator by default because of
living in Grimaldi with it's perfectly
horrible flocked wallpapers and so on
all her life she feared exposure of her
vulnerability and therefore needed to
create a mask to hide behind and she did
just this
using her powers of self creation and to
construct romaine Brooks the artist as
you see in the 1923 portrait from her
student days until the death of her
brother and mother within a year of each
other in 1901 she lived basically on a
small allowance that she managed to
induce her mother to give her roughly
300 francs a month of course at the time
that she was a student and studying in
Rome the scandals from Oscar Wilde were
coming to the fore and from bosie you
see them here on the right
she studied art in Italy and in France
and spent time on the Isle of Capri
where many gays lesbians and bisexuals
had gone to escape the homophobic
fallout from the Oscar Wilde trial some
of you may be familiar with that and
there are many good biographies on Wilde
and what happened there in 1897 when she
went to Rome basically they had
sentenced him to two years in jail for
the sin of loving this boy whose father
was an absolutely terrible homophobe who brought him to
trial and this resulted in homosexuality
becoming a hot issue and many people
escaping to Capri at that time some were sent along among them and others after
which of course Wilde became an outcast
and died of cerebral meningitis in 1900
when romaine arrived in Paris as an 18
year old girl she came of age in a city
that was the capital the cultural
capital of Europe
she immediately involved herself in the
life of Paris as I mentioned and she
went biking which her mother thought was
awful and became a bloomer girl and
started to experience as any young
person would the pleasures of the city
she embraced the new sport of cycling
for women and cycling at night she was
an active Walker and athletic and an
early adopter of sporting fashions she
regularly went biking wearing those
bloomers which shocked her mother who
thought she was scandalous Romaine often
disembarked at the Chinese pavilion
which I showed you earlier where
fashionable ladies took refreshments
among other things they did it was there
she came out sexually when an
attractively dressed fashionable older
woman hit on her and seated herself at
Romaine's table they went home to the
woman's apartment that afternoon and so
began her gay life it wasn't until 1901
while living in Capri with the death of
her brother and mother as I mentioned
that she became independently wealthy
she had been poor she had been a student
with barely any money at all until that
time for thirteen years so she was well
acquainted with the artistic life and
with getting by on very little something
that Nathalie Barney never had to do
this changed everything for Romaine she
engaged in a marriage Blanc with the
homosexual John Ellingham Brooks who had
been a lover of Somerset Maugham she cut
off her long hair purchased hiking
clothing at our Boy shop and expected to
go off on a sketching tour her husband
was horrified and pulled the no wife of
mine card as well as inquiring about her
making a will to protect our money that
did it for Romaine the marriage lasted
less than a year and she moved to London
and took a studio
romaine Brooks was a maverick after she
inherited her money and left her husband
she was in command of her own life she
moved to Paris in 1905 probably as I
said in pursuit of a lover they are
probably winning once there the 31 year
old Romaine Brooks worked hard at
perfecting her creative identity the
artists like the legendary David Bowie
she became very good at projecting her
confected self but this was just a
cover for the very damaged vulnerable
and needy child she at heart was one who
longed for the love of a mothering not
smothering mother lover it took her
several passionate love affairs
including the one with Ida to find a
stable life with the notorious Natalie
Barney who became the love of her life
for fifty two and a half years prior to
this she had previously had affairs with
the poet Renee Vivian who I showed you
with winnaretta singer and most notably
with her most inspiring muse Ida
Rubinstein and I'm showing you her
portrait which she wrote about and which
I quote in the book and Ida was madly in
love with her essentially the glamour of
Ida is almost impossible to describe
unless you're really looking at some of
the costuming from the Ballet Russe
here's one of the headdresses elaborate
and exquisitely insectoid kind of
creation that she wore you see she wears
the kinds of bandanas and crowns and so
on and Romaine writes extensively about
walking with her and Boulogne when she
was inspired to paint this portrait of
Ida with her hair blowing back in the
wind and her costuming which was so
beautifully depicted here in this
portrait at any rate Ida fell madly in
love with her and just wanted to retire
to the country to some farm where she
could keep her all to herself even
though she had a husband who was madly
trying to
pursue her and a lover Lord Guinness at
that time none of them seemed to matter
as much as romaine but romaine wasn't
having being retired to a farm that just
was not for her
and so Ida continued in this particular
case I'm showing you a example of her
playing st. Sebastian which was one of
her most scandalous roles and this opera
performance was written by  D'Annunzio who
Romaine also became involved with
although I don't think physically
although a biographer too would like to
think that she was involved physically
with him I think their relationship was
more on a spiritual and intellectual
level because D'Annunzio himself when
she questioned him said well you know
you're not really a woman you're a boy
and she said but you don't have any
pictures of me up he had a little rose gallery of
all the conquests that he had and so
that led me to think well I don't think
so
otherwise she would have been in the
Rose gallery of his conquests and anyways they had a very intimate
spiritual relationship and she was
devastated by his infidelity and by his
accusations of her being jealous which
she wasn't basically of him and he also
wanted her to keep him and he said
essentially to her well if you can pay
me as much as the woman who's keeping me
that I'll be happy to be with you and
she was so insulted she rushed off to
Paris and wrote him a number of very
impassioned and hurt letters about how
he had betrayed her trust and how you
know he ought to just go off with all of
the women that he was sleeping with or getting essentially because he had hurt her
so badly at any rate Lily de Gramont comes into this picture around
1916 when this affair with Nathalie
begins as I said Lily was
a princess of the blood she had been
married to one of the aristocrats at
that time de Gramont and what happened was she fell
in love with Natalie she had two
daughters with this man he caused her
two miscarriages by throwing her down
the stairs once why because so she had
gone to visit her friend Proust
essentially without telling him and
another time because she went to visit
her mother he was a control freak abuser
basically and she was happy to leave him
but that left her  penniless and
Natalie essentially paid for her and her
daughters during that period in 1916 she
met Romaine and they fell in love
but being Natalie she wanted to have it
all and she did after a protracted
argument in which Lily went flouncing
off we think to the country during the
war you have to remember this was during
World War one so you can imagine the
difficulties of travel and also the
tensions that these women had during
that period Romaine of course was awarded the
Legion of Honour for her service during
World War one and eventually these women
managed to settle the whole thing
Natalie did it with a marriage contract
when there was no marriage at that time
and she agonized over it Lily accepted it
eventually after saying there was going
to be no Lily if there was Romaine and
Natalie said well I want you but I want
Romaine and I'm not going to give Romaine
up so they settled and what happened was
Lily got the marriage contract and then
they went on a honeymoon to Niagara
Falls and in the meantime Romaine
continued in her widening of her circle
of people that she knew in Paris at that
time she painted this portrait of Elsie de Wolfe
who some of you may be familiar
with who are in design
and she of course became lady Mendl but
she was involved also in a polyamorous
relationship not only with bessie marbury but also with Anne Morgan the
daughter of JP Morgan and another woman
as well so we have these very fluid
sexual kinds of relationships ongoing
very contemporary in that sense then you
see on the right Janet flanner who also
was rivals with Natalie Barney or a
number of women and was not wealthy but
made her living working for The New
Yorker in Paris and was known as Genêt
at that point and this is an iconic
portrait of her highly stylish and her
top hat and striped pants and so on very
fetching Ida during the war was so well
known that Romaine painted a painting
called the cross of France to inspire
the French to keep on fighting against
the Germans at that time and Ida turned
her rather large hotel into a hospital
and we see her here nursing the wounded
this painting traveled with a series of
poems and other things across France and
Montesquieu recited the poems of
D'Annunzio so the three of them were
involved in the war effort they seemed
from the point of view of just looking
at them very frivolous aristocratic
privileged but they pitched in and were
involved in trying to buck up the
spirits of the French people during this
perfectly horrendous war worse than
World War two in many ways here we see
Natalie who was known as the Amazon you
see her in her riding outfit one of the
reasons she was known as the Amazon was
because she rode astride rather than
I'd saddle as was the fashion and on the
right hand side you see Natalie and Lily
De Gramont on their honeymoon at Niagara
Falls as soon as the war ended so you
have the documentation of this which we
didn't and weren't aware of before in
the do say in France and when they
returned what happened was Romaine
painted a portrait of Natalie and it was
a kind of reification of her marriage
contract visual of course being Romaine
with Natalie and as I said that started
a fifty two and a half year relationship
the the affair with Ida petered out
sometime during world war one and in the interim she
was alone and then she met Natalie so we
we see all of this Romaine's lover Ida of
course was like the Lady Gaga of her
generation and stepped up to the plate
as I said during World War one turning
her residence into a hospital and
nursing the sick ironically after the
breakup with Ida during the war Romaine
did find true love with the notoriously
consistent but non-monogamous Natalie
the stability she had been yearning for
all of her life materialized after a
fierce rivalry between Lily De Gramont
and Romaine she finally became part of a
stable household around 1918 as I said and she may
have commemorated this in a drawing I'll
show you in a moment but I want to point
out the Jade horse in the fourth round
of Natalie's painting because it was
something that Romaine commissioned and
had made for her and you'll see it again
as I'm talking about her various
apartments here's her portrait in 1924
of Lily de Gramont a really marvelous
portrait of her and
very different from what you saw other
painters do because they had an intimate
relationship and they were how shall I
put it friendly rivals I think is the
best way to put it when they finally
settled down Romaine did this drawing
which may allude to their threesome in
1930 as part of her convalescence when
she was doing the drawings for her
memoir and so we have now this happy
settled relationship and it was a family
people have thought that she had no
family and she had no relationships but
actually Nathalie provided a family for
and here on the left hand side you have
Alice Pike Barney who is a Washington
socialite she was also partially Jewish
which accounts for some of the problems
that Nathalie experienced when she and
Romaine were stuck for six years during
World War Two in Italy and I go into
that in the book too both of them have
been accused of being fascist
sympathizers they were not they were two
women caught up in an impossible
situation under duress during that six
years and I go into that in the book too
so you see here Alice who was quite
theatrical and who spent a great deal of
time in France and on the right Laura
Barney who was Natalie's sister Laura
was sort of the general financial
manager for both Nathalie and Romaine and
took over most of the duties neither of
them wanted to be bothered with when it
came to managing the family and in fact
Laura lived above Romaine and managed her
apartment when Romaine after the war
never went back as she rented it out for
a number of years and finally ended up
selling it in the 1950s
now Romaine's style we've seen some of her
style in a dress but
her decorating skills started as I
mentioned briefly in passing at the age
of 14 when she was called upon
essentially to do something about the
Chateau Grimaldi and the flat the rooms
that she had been allocated here I'm
showing you the typical flat and even a
deco influenced flat in Paris none of
these appealed to Romaine she couldn't
stand a lot of decoration wallpaper and
so on and she certainly didn't like this
furniture and the flocked wallpapers or
carpets the busyness of it all so when
she moved back to Paris in 1905 she
brought bought an elegant apartment on
the Avenue Trocadero
now 20 Avenue du President Wilson on
the right bank of de Sienne and took a
studio on the left bank
she was innovative and rejected the
overblown styles that I'm showing you
here
this was also Romaine in her flat you see
her here there are several elements that
I think you should be aware of there is of
course her painting in the background
she always had a piano she actually took
lessons from Manuel de Falla
and he dedicated a composition to her
called Chinoiserie
which I only found out from somebody
contacting me on Facebook again so
there's something to be said for the
Internet in this case at any rate she was musical if she had had
training and she always had a beautiful
singing voice which D'Annunzio and others
enjoyed and always enjoyed music and
playing the piano and going to musical
events which explains her patronage of
de Falla and some of the others there was
also the paris that saw the dawn of the
unveiling of madame Matisse with her
yellow face and a nose as green as
jungle vines that was something that
Romaine was not interested in in the least she
was a classicist she
trained under Renaissance kinds of
formal training and she always loved a
classic look to her paintings as you've
seen from looking at Lily de Gramont
however when she was in Paris and
involved with the aristocratic set she
did paint society ladies one of them was
a rather well known Spanish decorator
and you see her here she made a kind of
satire she didn't like this woman and I
think it's quite obvious from looking at
the painting she didn't like her over
elaborate dress she didn't like her
really again frivolous hat or her
attitude in general and so this is the
way she painted her as a kind of
supercilious shallow person
basically and on the right hand side I'm
showing you her white azaleas I believe
that this is probably the composition
that inspired de Falla
to write the Chinoiserie
because essentially she was very
interested in Japanese screens and
Japanese prints as many of the
modernists were I refer to her as a
conservative modernist figurative
modernist in that sense this is
something that as an art history student
I was never taught we never got to see
anything like this all we ever saw was
matisse or Cezanne or Van Gogh or so on
as the only exemplars of modernism but
there was a whole other neglected
modernism going on all during this
period which completely rejected Fauvism
Impressionism and post-impressionism
Brooks attracted immediate attention
with her colorless color schemes
basically she had a palette that was
chromatic monochromatic Gray's blacks
whites mauves fawns her style was
revolutionary as the styles of the
emergent modernists this is something
that as I said it hasn't been gone into
very much but I think it's
an idea of exploring the interwar period
from a different side of the equation
during this time she also became well
known among the intellectual set as an
interior decorator reluctantly designing
a number of apartments for her
acquaintances upon request now from the
get-go she exacted the full measure of
her exacting standards of excellence
romaine immersed herself in the detailed
fabrication and installation of
everything from furniture and cabinets
to carpets and draperies with her usual
Flair
by this time Romaine had acquired an
English Chauffeur a french maid a spanish
concierge and a belgian chef she dressed
in urban velvet and pearls we saw one of
her gowns in the apartment her gowns
like her home had an individual touch
that appealed to the exclusive tastes of
Paris's right-bank culture vultures
echoing her aesthetic forerunners Brooks
said that her only purpose in decorating
these rooms was to bring them in harmony
with her moods and to provide potential
backgrounds for her paintings each ensem she said had it's white accent
which sent a half tone figure back to a
second plane off the other color I
used only to show up these half tones
which alone interested me
by the mid-1920s a young journalist who
visited her apartment commented and I'm
quoting in the three faced physical glass
I perceived the real face of mrs. Brooks
who had just made herself up with that
okra powder that she loved so much and
I shoot my eyes back to that other this
is severe and pale of being invisible to
our eyes that the artist is rendered on
canvas a solitary wanderer at large
within a devastated habitat a sort of
uncanny double a manifestation
of the subjects unconscious
singular indivisible private essence the
same portrait that captivated me so much
when I first encountered it a newspaper
account in La Figaro of Brooks's life circa 1911 gives almost as much space
to a description of her house as to her
early struggles as an artist Brooks is
innovative color schemes of black white
and varying shades of gray made for
striking interiors in an age of
elaborate furniture richly embroidered
fabrics and flocked wallpaper Brooks
added drama to her interiors with black
and white floors beneath black mohair
covered furniture gray walls and many
bouquets of white flowers which you saw
in her interior custom-made brocade
hangings framed the windows and the
light gray velvet carpets adorned the
stairs one of the most spectacular
features of her apartment was the roof
garden which unfortunately we don't have
any pictures of but we do have the
description with its whole front
overlooking the city of Paris where she
painted Cocteau and the winding said the
entire front of the roof garden
consisted of heavy plate glass at the
back of the garden Brooks painted a
fantastic mural of the balcony
with a crowd of people about to walk
into a garden through a pergola it was
flanked by flimsy floating black
hangings and black supports offset by a
rail of heavy twisted white glass that
added to the illusion of another
worldly space romaine was one of the first to
recognize and patronize the then-unknown
architect and designer Eileen Gray when
she first arrived in Paris commissioning
her to fabricate the black bordered gray
rugs and black lacquer furniture that
made the artist's interior so
spectacular I showed you the gray interior shortly before
this attention to detail became a grace
note in Romain's decorating scheme that
set the smart set in Paris raving about
her and clamoring to have her design
their interiors such innovators as
Natalie Barney noted were such
innovations as Natalie Barney noted were
introduced by Brooks long before Syrie Maugham Somerset Maugham's wife or Elsie DeWolfe
became known for introducing these
monochromatic color schemes to the world
of interior decorating though again
through Romain's connections grey became
involved with Natalie Barney's intimate
circle of friends this brought grey to
the attention of those who could afford
to patronize her my biography thus
corrects a basic misreading of Romain's
work as Romain herself as a kind of
retardataire symbolist and demonstrates
that she and her circle influenced the
course of modern design fashion and art
for what today would be called an a-list
of clients here we see her in her villa
cercola at capri and she was also an
amateur photographer and we see her
behind her camera here in her studio
she probably learned a bit about photography from Man Ray who was a friend of hers and photographed her actually this
villa is for sale for any of you who may
be interested
as I mentioned Robert de montesquieu
also consulted her and he became her
patron and friend and we see here the
interior of villa cercola I'm sorry it's such a
bad slide but it's the best we can do
because we simply don't have too many
visual examples of her taste but as you
can see the large black pillows here you
can see the abstract designs and the
simplicity of these interiors always in
these interiors you'll find two things -
a piano and an easel speaking to her two loves basically music and art esentially - now
some of you decorators will know more
about this than I do but you see these
and this began at the age of 14
essentially where she talks about how
she got migraines essentially from the
elaborations of patterns in the Chateau
Grimaldi and the first thing she did as
a 14 year old was get a large roll of
grey paper and she plastered over all of
the walls tacking up the gray paper she
got rid of all the elaborate furniture
and she replaced it with comfortable
armchairs which you see she did
throughout her career and simple rugs
she took up all the rugs and got rid of
everything that would disturb her
sensibilities essentially and that began
at 14 and continued throughout her life
and Natalie Barney
remarks on it several times in her
souvenirs and and other things that she
writes about romaine but they're very
simplified very modern and and not at
all what was in fashion at that time and
here we see her with one of her models
in the villa cercola of as I said she was
into tableau she had a somewhat fetishy
sense of appreciation and you see this
veiled model here on one of the couches
I can't tell you much about the textiles
but those of you who are into textile
design probably can place this more than I can
any new information
romaine mixed periods in genres bringing
contemporary and period pieces together
long before it became popular she was a
taste maker along with her mates Lily de Gramont and Natalie Barney you see
examples of this this is her New York
apartment in the 1930s when she spent
almost three years in New York and took
a studio at Carnegie I can't say much
about again the patterns or her choice
of furniture but the simplification is
there and also her interest in various
objects this was something that I was
going to point out to you you see the
Jade horse here she took it with her
when she went there's also a portrait of
romaine a sculptural portrait right here
which I'll show you the detail of and the
goat that we saw in Elsie de Wolf's
portrait is there so she took these
objects with her throughout her career
and she lived to be 96 and you see them
in her studio which I'll show you in a
minute as well so while she may not have
seemed like a very warm and sort of
huggy person she did have a sentimental
side and she was attached to many of the
things the New York apartment
essentially she reimagined in a way that
excited both the left and right banks of
Paris and those who visited her and
commented on it and the emphasis on her
relationship with objects is interesting
because she used them symbolically to
suggest the characters of some of her
sitters they were kind of inside jokes
Romain believed that individual
interiors reflected the personalities of
their owners as did their choice of
clothing colors everything about how
they comported themselves in public and
private and so you see here Natalie
Barney's horse and she was called the
Amazon as we know by Remy de Gourmont 
who was crazy about her
and then Elsie de wolfe this symbolizes
Bessie Marbury her lover of the time
which says a lot about the way that Elsie
sort of ran so these were inside jokes
and gives you an idea of Romaine's
rather dry and sometimes satiric sense
of humor she could visualize how certain
pieces come together in an interior and
there was nothing narrow about romaine
brooks as an interior decorator or
designer as far as being a fashion icon
you can see her here with a sort of
bell-shaped tunic done by the sculptor
chana orloff orloff's Amazon
gives you some idea of the
simplification of abstraction going on
at this particular point in time
so Romaine was in the forefront of
patronizing people who would be
considered more forward-looking
modernist but she herself never really
crossed over now during the war in Italy
this was her villa sant' Agnese which she
rented first and then and then bought
when they got stuck in Italy she had
thought that Mussolini would never go
into the war that Italy would never
enter World War two and what happened
was basically they were unable to get
papers to leave to go to Switzerland
where they hoped Lily de Gramont would join
them and Natalie who did have a
steamship ticket to the United States
which her sister Laura insisted she get
gave it up for two Jewish people one the
wife was pregnant so essentially she
saved three lives by giving up her own
ticket when called upon by Mary Berenson
Bernard Berenson's wife to try and save
these two young people she didn't think
about it for two minutes which is why I
say it's absurd to call her a fascist in
any sense she was deluded by Ezra Pound
in her views and I talked with several
people I interviewed and they said she
hadn't
a clue as far as politics go which I
believe she had a way of blinding
herself to things she didn't want to see
they stayed in the villa the villa was
occupied by Nazis and fascists and they
ended up having to dig a trench to be
safe from the bombs and so on because
this villa overlooked the road it was
about 15 minutes outside of Florence and
they had to pack bags because of
Natalie's 1/4 Jewish blood it made her a
target to be carted off to a
concentration camp which she was
terrified of and Romaine tried to protect
her they did have a holding pen in Parma
for foreigners and those with Jewish
blood that they had as an exit point for
going to some of the camps in various
places now as far as Studios go and so
on as I said you can still see the goat
there you can see some of the paintings
that will be shown in the Smithsonian Institute on
June 17th when that show opens in
Washington DC so you have this long term
association with objects of course as
far as dress goes Romaine fits the picture
says Natalie and Ida so I can't say too
much about classic costuming since many
of us wear these things for New Year's
parties and other things and do it very
gracefully there's nothing like a girl
in a suit romaine on Capri had a very
classical leaning as did Natalie as she
and at that time Pauline Tarn that is
Renee Vivian went to Greece and were
very involved in Greek culture and in
loving classicism so you see some
examples again when she was in a more
casual mode in Capri she was very much
the athletic girl she swam
off Capri every day she had a beautiful
villa there with one of the only two
dance floors so she wasn't exactly this
somber uninteresting person who didn't
know how to have fun we see her here in
various styles that she wore these are
portraits by Man Ray and you see the
shirt that I was talking to Valerie
about before this began I kept saying
why can't they make a shirt like that
I'd love to have a shirt like that it's
so classic and beautiful and you see it
in her in her portrait that she did in
1923 so she's heavier here this is only
two years later she had a sweet tooth
and so did Natalie and they put on a lot
of weight at one point and then lost it
of course that style that we're talking
about is quite evident in the portrait
of una Troubridge who I had showed you
before the monocle was a kind of a kind
of coded symbol for gay women at that
time they wore them in Germany they wore
them in the upper classes and I'm
showing you here the the serial English
serial the first time they had a lesbian
character in in television and that was
Cissy Meldrum she was the first openly
gay character or a lesbian character in
a TV series and it was called and you
can get it on YouTube it's hysterical
you rang m'Lord and so you have this
jolly Edwardian lesbian with a very dry
sense of humor and you see her with the
monocle again so Romaine was ahead of the
time so of course I have to tell you
that people have said this is a satire
but actually una chose what she posed in
so it hardly could be a satire if the
model herself dressed that way although
Romaine found it very funny and she found
it funny that Radclyffe Hall and Una
you know actually Radclyffe Hall wore
boxers and and shopped at men's shops
both she and Natalie found that
hysterical the bright red lipstick and
thickly powdered face that the
journalist commented on mark the
portrait subject as a woman that is
Romaine as a woman and a fashion
conscious one the Legion of Honor which
you can hardly see is in her lapel there
connotes that she is both a hero and a
woman modern and up-to-date the gloved
hand with its turn back cup has a long
history in visual representation that is
generally associated with seduction
usually that of a male returning a glove
to a woman or a woman suggesting that
she is open to seduction in Brooks this
case it serves as a marker of
aristocratic privilege and authority
that she does not remove her glove and
the portrait suggests that she is on the
alert and in defiance of conventions of
feminine wiles not available to men so
her portrait becomes a kind of series of
socially encoded messages about rank
gender and availability she was very
well aware of all of these naturally for
those of you familiar with the history
of fashion masculine and feminine you
will immediately recognize her
inspiration Beau Brummel who made the
glove practically a fetish just as the
top hat too belongs to the cult of the
dandy again Canoting Romain Brooks's
brand of modernism as a self-created
projection of her artistic personality
the thing about clothes as Marlena
Dietrich and Fran Lebowitz who has been
a guest here number of times said is
that they are artificial you can lie you
can choose the way you look which is not
true of natural beauty the top hat as
well as the tux is an emblem of the
masculine elite it assumed prominence in
fashion magazines of the 1920s as the
Brummel top hat sported by many new
women
including greta garbo it is not the
usual beautifully confection that you
saw on the Spanish decorator that Romaine
painted no no fluff no feathers no the
modern woman is rather about character
and more than anything she is an
expression of a serene soul in a robust
harmonious body and that becomes very
evident in Marlena Dietrich's style and
you see her here in these beautiful
trousers that have become very popular
among women as casual styles of sports
styles you see them in the Hamptons a
lot in short a woman in full possession
of herself and no longer just a thing of
pleasure or at leisure and I think that
becomes very clear in this cartoon from
1927 in punch the aunt is here in her
coat and her heels and so on and the caption reads well I dare
say they're comfortable but I suppose
I'm old-fashioned I don't like them much
why one would think you were a boy the
niece rejoined her
oh come dear old thing that's absurd who
ever saw a boy wearing earrings well of course we all do now so and
as far as whites go we have our icons we
have Ellen here in her white trousers
and on the right hand side from 1925 we
have Thelma woods and Djuna Barnes who
Natalie Barney ended up supporting until
she died because they were involved and
Natalie if nothing was consistent if not
monogamous
of course Romaine was ahead of the pack
in her beautifully rendered portrait of
the the Jewish lesbian who was her rival
in painting or at least liked to think
of herself that way even though I think
she's substandard the
suit that you see and the looks that we
see are continuing to be absolutely
contemporary I love victor/victoria and
I love Julie Andrews doing and I thought
she did it superbly and I loved the
relationship between the cigar and the
lipstick in this with the model on the
right now Gluck was ahead of her time in terms of her dress
code and it was commented on in many of
the fashion magazines this portrait was
called Peter portrait of a young English
girl basically and you see Gluck here in
a photograph and how well Romaine has
captured her and of course Gluck wasn't the only one
sporting a masculine dress you see
Colette here on the right in her
masculine pose and you see Helmut
Newton's rendering of this model with
her cigarette and her suit and so on
it still remains a timeless fashion slim
cutting-edge and to the point
a Romaine managed to sit out the war as
did Natalie they went through
deprivation starvation's threats on all
sides and at the end of the war finally
it was a Hemingway's wife who was
embedded with the troops who rescued
them Martha Gellhorn some of you may be
familiar with her as well Romaine's
still trying to be a fashion statement
in her stripe coat her suit and Natalie
not carrying all that much she tended to
think that her mind was what was really of interest as well as her
her lover which she never gave up and even at the
end you can see in her 90s
Romaine Brooks remained a sartorial
figure in terms of her dress the cravat
and a really sweet kind of look in that
sense she was an extraordinary woman and
Montesquieu said about her madam Brooks
proclaims that she never set foot in
whistlers atelier because people were
constantly comparing her she is
nonetheless and I complement her on it
one of the most curious and most sincere
students of this master whom she had
studied understood and whose mode she
has continued according to her own
fashion and the decadent poet Gabriele
an intimate friend of Brooks him she
represented in two portraits also he
compared her to Whistler dubbing her the
cleverest color symphonist in modern art
which indeed she was one wonders in
today's easy climate of sexual fluidity
for young people would Romaine have
called herself a lesbian perhaps not but
then she thought of herself and Natalie
as a kind of third sex and based on the
sapphic model very unlike Una and
Radclyffe Hall who they both found
laughable as I mentioned additionally
they found Gertrude Stein
and Alice's monogamy unbelievable
after the war and they returned well
Nathalie returned to Paris and Romaine
stayed in Italy trying to rediscover
herself as a painter one of my
objectives in Romaine Brooks a life has
been to battle the numerous
misconceptions about her established by
previous biographers and those who have
written about Romaine without the
advantage of the new information my
research has uncovered
according to Romaine the responsibility
of an artist and prick up your ears
people was to be true to her art so it's
admonition to you however she defined
that thus it appears that being devoted
to your art means neglecting other
people and that maybe what you have to
do I have written extensively on her
aesthetics which it is taken me
years to parse out from her very careful
camouflaging she demanded she wanted
only the most refined of sensibilities
to be privileged she required that to
really see her art not just look at it
glance it and dismiss it as mere
portraiture as a viewer must devote both
time and attention to it study it and
let it penetrate his or her
consciousness like the subtle taste of a
beautifully aged Bordeaux she was a
master Alchemist at mixing subtle color
on a tonal scale that aspired to a tone
poem like Debussy she orchestrated her
colors across the painted surface in a
way that prompted  d'annunzio to describe her as a master of gradations of
monochromatic color schemes this is very
obvious in even her earliest work which
was influenced by various English French
and American painters I have referred to
them in my book although she tried to
hide her influences throughout her long
life
she took a great deal aesthetically
speaking from d'annunzio notions of
what is true what is noble and good and
from various theorists as well as her
friend Bernard Berenson who she walked
the hills of Florence with talking art
and aesthetics in her view what
privileges should be accorded to the
artist a good question
"artists are" she said the "elect of God"
they are accorded nothing in other words
they are entitled to everything even the
lifelong devotion of her non-monogamous
mate natalie barney who according to her
cousin ambassador David Bruce was still
mourning
Romaine's death when he visited her in
February over a year later and shortly
before
Romaine's long overdue solo show opened
at the Smithsonian in December of 1971
the one that so inspired me Romaine was
an elitist and remained one all her
life I hope
that you will take away from my talk
today and my book Romain Brooks a life a
greater understanding of her character
her achievements and her art with a new
appreciation this appreciation is being
forwarded as I speak at the Fortuny in
Venice where this show is running
through April and has garnered all kinds
of articles and praise we are indeed
fortunate that a new generation is able
to view her amazing paintings and
drawings at the Fortuny Museum in Venice but
for us here in the United States we can
look forward to seeing her work at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum in
Washington DC in June actually opening
June 17th of this year so I thank you
very much for listening to my long
admiration of Romaine and I'm happy to
answer several of the questions that
have come up one of them is what would
Romaine Brooks think of how women are
sexualized in media today oh my well she
was an early feminist I have to say that
I think she would be appalled at the
misogyny that we have seen surface in
this current presidential election it's
one thing to criticize somebody for for
their behavior
for their decisions and so on it's quite
another thing to make a witch out of
them and burn them at the stake which
seems to be going on I think Romain
would be a defender of somebody like
Hillary I think she would be appalled at
some of the advertising that goes on
today
and a number of other things that we see
in the media constantly denigrating
women instead of appreciating them so to
answer your question she would be
appalled I have another question here if
Romain Brooks were alive today do you
think she would work in fashion
I don't think so
so it went on it went on like that
basically so no I don't think that she
would have been interested in a fashion
design she might have been interested in
painting you if you were interesting
enough to her
how did Romaine Brooks get her name okay
that's that's a relatively easy one as I
mentioned early on in in this talk she
had a family history of mental illness
or at least she thought that she might
go mad because she had a pretty mad
mother and a mad brother certifiable and
an aunt who was mad and the woman in the
Attic
basically so she chose to distance
herself from her family names she did
not want to be Romain Beatrice Goddard
because the name was associated with
that mental illness so when she married
Brooks John Ellingham Brooks who was
really pretty much of a dilettante and a
failure she took his name although she
divorced him and pensioned him off at
300 pounds a month for the rest of his
life he eventually died of cancer in the
20s and anyway she took the name Brooks
at one point she had thought that she
might change her name when Carl Van
Vechten complimented her and said well
you know Romaine you really should have
been called Roman because you loved
Italy so much and she said well you know
I've signed all my paintings and it's
really too late for me to do that but if
I had it to do over again I would that's
how she got her name
although I have to tell you people when
she was in Italy and she really didn't
want any notoriety at the height of her
fame she took the Goddard name on her
stationery so nobody could find her
another question
how has Romaine Brooks influenced your
life do you think your research on her
paintings
have influenced your style Oh without
doubt I mean the woman has led me on a
lifetime adventure
my style I think one of the reasons I
was attracted to the portrait is because
it resonated with me and my style
basically which is very simple I like
not to have to suffer my mother always
said you know if you're a woman that
were fashionable at the time but as
Romaine made very clear to me style is in
fashion
gloria steinam said it you have your own
style then you don't have to worry about
trends or fashion you just make it your
own in that sense so she had a great
influence on me and I also paint but
nothing like her I'm sort of an outside
artist but I do find that her color
palette is very appealing it's very
subtle and it isn't just black white and
gray as you will see if you go to the
Smithsonian and there's also her musical
sense which I've written about a little
bit in the book
very interesting kind of application of
paint I was talking to the curator who
those were some of her techniques I'm
curious about what happened
that she may have done where they may be
and you know if we can find more that
would be wonderful and then how has she
influenced my life
by it and I thought I don't know
anything about this person I never heard
I couldn't get to doing the research I
was finishing up my dissertation on the
Hudson River School if you can imagine
landscape and I thought I have got to
get back to this so that summer I went
to
She was very nice and I was very flattered by it and I did
subsequently publish the first article
on romaine in art criticism under
Donald hospit and Lawrence Holloway who
were very supportive and mentors of mine
so that's
that's yet another challenge of doing
this book there are copyright issues and
there are contentions that are ongoing
which I'm trying to find some pro-bono
international lawyer who will deal with
them because the Smithsonian was
sued about ten years after
Romaine's death by a fellow who claimed
he owned the copyright she never as far
as I know assigned the copyright to
anyone and what that does as far as
getting the show I envisioned which is a
big international show Romaine and her
peers sergeant Whistler Mary Cassatt I'd
really love to see her beside them all I
know she'd wipe most of them off by the
size alone much less the technique most
of them off the map or at least contend
with them as a woman for size and for
style but at any rate what what the
problem is is the notion of travelling
any of these works to Europe for
instance and traveling shows back and
forth would create a problem of
confiscation because of this man and his
claim to the copyright there's no way of
really knowing what she said because in
France you can't get into the will
unless you're a relative or you have a
vested interest of some kind I did hire
a lawyer I did a Kickstarter in order to
get the money to vet this but we still
haven't gotten there the relatives were
apparently burnt by the first biography
and they have not cooperated since then
so we still have that ongoing problem
the collector in France who owns most of
what you see in the Fortuny is not
willing to insure them to travel and the
museum's at this point don't want to
take on the responsibility she isn't a
big enough artist well neither was Frida
Kahlo
neither was Lempicka but there's always
tomorrow
you
