In Queer Moderns, Alice T. Friedman tells the story of the queer avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s in New York, Paris and Venice.
Seen through the eyes of Max Ewing (1903–1934), the young musician, photographer, and bon vivant who moved in impressive circles. In his photographs and letters, readers meet the rising stars of modern art, music, dance and literature and enter a world of interracial friendship, “queer space” and experimentation before it was all swept away by the Depression. This is a story that reveals that the history of modernism is more queer and more Black than recognized.
In the 1920s, Ewing became part of an international coterie of artists led by Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper.
In Europe, he was entertained by Gertrude Stein, met Stravinsky and took a road trip with Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney.
In 1928, in a closet in his apartment, Ewing created the Gallery of Extraordinary Portraits, an installation of photos of his favorite celebrities — Black, white, clothed and nude. For his Carnival of Venice, he took portraits of more than a hundred friends — including Paul Robeson, Berenice Abbott, Isamu Noguchi, Agnes de Mille and E. E. Cummings — posed
in front of a backdrop of Saint Mark’s Square.
Ewing joined the party and then died tragically. His story sheds new light on modernism and an artistic milieu ahead of its time.
Queer Moderns will be out on May 27 by Princeton University Press and retails for $49.95.
Friedman is the Grace Slack McNeil Professor Emerita of American Art at Wellesley College and founding co-director of its architecture program. Her books include American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture and Women and Making of the Modern House: A Social and Cultural History.
— From staff reports