Carolyn Burke

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Carolyn Burke (born March 29, 1940) [1] is an Australian-born American writer, translator, and author of four biographies. Her first was a life of the English poet Mina Loy, published in 1996 and reprinted in 2021. She has also written books about the American photographer Lee Miller, the French chanteuse Edith Piaf, and the interwoven lives of four iconic figures of American art, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, and Rebecca Salsbury.

Contents

Early life and education

Burke was born in 1940 to Valda Steigrad Katz and David Morris Katz in Sydney, Australia: she came to the U.S. when her mother remarried Dr. Harold Goldberg. Burke earned a B.A. with Highest Honors in French Literature at Swarthmore College (1961); a M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1971), both in English and Comparative Literature, at Columbia University. In Paris, where she lived and worked for many years, she studied French at the Sorbonne.

Early career

Burke taught English literature at several colleges and universities including the University of Paris-IV, the University of Lille (France); the University of California, Santa Cruz and Davis (U.S.); the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales (Australia). She co-translated two books by the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Luce Irigaray, co-edited a collection of essays about Irigaray, and published more than twenty articles on French feminist theory and modernist women writers in scholarly journals.

At the invitation of poet Kathleen Fraser, Burke served as a contributing editor at How(ever), a journal of innovative writing by contemporary women poets in dialogue with neglected texts by modernist writers, including Gertrude Stein and Mina Loy.

Burke left academia in 1990 to write full time. Her reviews, essays, and translations have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art in America, Art Press, Critical Inquiry, Heat, Sulfur, La Revue des Deux Mondes, La Nouvelle Revue Française , and La Règle du Jeu.

Career as biographer

Of Burke's first book, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy, The Washington Post wrote: “An amazing examination of ‘modern life.’” The New Republic noted, “In this superb biography, the first ever, Carolyn Burke does full justice to the mercurial nature of Loy’s temperament, and offers judicious assessments of her work.” The Atlantic Monthly called the book “as much a history of early-twentieth-century aesthetics as it is a biography of a woman who took part in all the turmoil.” Choice called the book “a jewel of the biographer's art.” [2]

Burke's next book, Lee Miller: A Life, was nominated for the 2005 Biography Award by the National Book Critics Circle and translated into French. The New York Sun called the book a “state-of-the-art biography."; [3] The New York Times wrote that it “captures the excitement of Miller’s omnivorous spirit.”; [4] The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) noted, “Lee Miller was an astounding woman, brought memorably to life in this astounding book.” [5]

Burke's third biography, No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, was praised in The New York Times as “concise and gracefully written”; [6] in Booklist : “a perceptive, supportive, even definitive biography”. [7] The reviewer for the UK newspaper Daily Express wrote,“This book pays Piaf the supreme compliment of coming from both the heart and head of its author. You can feel a palpable love for her subject, and there’s also clear-headed analysis of what made Piaf tick.” [8] It has been translated into a number of languages including French.

Burke's next book, Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury was hailed by The Washington Post as “{a} sharp-eyed group portrait of two artistic couples. . . in astute, lucid prose.” [9] The Wall Street Journal called the book “Fascinating. . . . compelling. . . .thoroughly researched and capacious.” [10] The National Book Review observed: “In her deeply researched and richly imagined book, Burke focuses on two marriages in a way that amplifies the personal and artistic lives of a quartet of painters and photographers and magnifies their powerful influence on 20th century art—and on each other.” [11]

Books

Biographies

Translations and edited collections

Interviews

Critical studies and reviews

Related Research Articles

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291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally called the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", the gallery was established and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

"Les Trois Cloches" is a Swiss song written in French by Jean Villard. Edith Piaf recorded the song a cappella with the French vocal group Les Compagnons de la chanson in July 1946. The song became one of Édith Piaf's biggest hits, and when Piaf toured the US with Les Compagnons de la chanson, they introduced this song to an American audience. Tina Arena also recorded a hit version in 2000.

<i>Camera Work</i> Quarterly photographic journal (1903–1917)

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Rebecca Salsbury James (1891–1968) was a self-taught American painter, born in London, England of American parents who were traveling with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. She settled in New York City, where she married photographer Paul Strand. Following her divorce from Strand, James moved to Taos, New Mexico where she fell in with a group that included Mabel Dodge Luhan, Dorothy Brett, and Frieda Lawrence. In 1937 she married William James, a businessman from Denver, Colorado who was then operating the Kit Carson Trading Company in Taos. She remained in Taos until her death in 1968.

<i>The Flag</i> (OKeeffe painting) 1918 painting by Georgia OKeeffe

The Flag is a watercolor painting executed in 1918 by Georgia O'Keeffe that represents her anxiety about her brother being sent to fight in Europe during World War I. The war was particularly controversial and dangerous because of its use of new modern weapons and tactics, like the machine gun, mustard gas, naval mines and torpedoes, high-powered artillery guns, and combat aircraft. The painting was first publicly displayed in 1968. It is in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

<i>My Shanty, Lake George</i> Painting by Georgia OKeeffe

My Shanty, Lake George is a 1922 painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. From 1918 to 1934, Georgia O'Keeffe spent part of the year at Alfred Stieglitz's family estate in Lake George. The depicted shanty was O'Keeffe's studio, which was painted in subdued tones in response to criticism from Stieglitz' circle—Arthur Dove, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and Paul Strand. O'Keeffe said of the painting: "The clean, clear colors were in my head, but one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty I thought, "I can paint one of those dismal-colored paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try—all low-toned and dreary with the tree beside the door." My Shanty was the first painting by O'Keeffe purchased by Duncan Phillips.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe</span> Paintings made between 1920s and 1950s

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her close-up, or large-scale flower paintings, which she painted from the mid-1920s through the 1950s. She made about 200 paintings of flowers of the more than 2,000 paintings that she made over her career. One of her paintings, Jimson Weed, sold for $44.4 million, making it the most expensive painting sold of a female artist's work as of 2014.

Georgia E. Engelhard Cromwell was an American mountaineer in the Canadian Rockies and the Selkirk and Purcell ranges. She was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Rockies and was the leading female amateur climber of her day. She was also an accomplished painter and photographer.

"Padam, padam..." is a song originally released in 1951 by Édith Piaf. It was written for her by Henri Contet (lyrics) and Norbert Glanzberg (music).

<i>Floating Figure</i>

Floating Figure is a 1927 sculpture by Gaston Lachaise.

<i>Spring Showers, the Coach</i> Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Spring Showers, the Coach is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1899–1900. The picture was published in the Camera Notes journal in January 1902. Sometimes it is incorrectly presented as being taken in 1902.

<i>Summer Days</i> (Georgia OKeeffe) Painting by Georgia OKeeffe from 1936

Summer Days is a 1936 oil painting by the American 20th-century artist Georgia O'Keeffe. It depicts a buck deer skull with large antlers juxtaposed with a vibrant assortment of wildflowers hovering below. The skull and flowers are suspended over a mountainous desert landscape occupying the lower part of the composition. Summer Days is among several landscape paintings featuring animal skulls and inspired by New Mexico desert O'Keeffe completed between 1934 and 1936.

References

  1. Greenwood, Helen (January 7, 2006), "Shoot for Success", The Sydney Morning Herald
  2. Brown, Pam (1998), "Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy", Jacket Magazine
  3. Rollyson, Carl (2005-11-16), "An Archetypal 20th-Century Woman", The New York Sun
  4. Maslin, Janet (2005-12-22), "Lee Miller: A Life", The New York Times
  5. Sooke, Alastair (2005-12-28), "As rational as a scattered jigsaw", The Daily Telegraph
  6. Gavin, James (2011-03-25), "The Rise of Edith Piaf", The New York Times
  7. Hooper, Brad (2011-02-01), "No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf", Booklist
  8. Shenton, Mark (2011-04-24), "Edith Piaf - No Regrets: Legacy of a French Songbird", Daily Express
  9. Smith, Wendy (2019-02-28), "Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz and the artists they inspired", Washington Post
  10. Lesser, Wendy (2019-04-05), "'Foursome' and 'Alfred Stieglitz' Review: The Intimate Gallerist", Wall Street Journal
  11. "Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury by Carolyn Burke", The National Book Review , 2019-03-03
  12. Burke, C. (1996). Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-374-70954-9 . Retrieved 2024-05-15.