QUEER MODERNS

A confluence of artistic rebels.

Art and architecture historian Friedman creates a vibrant portrait of queer bohemia in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, drawing extensively from the correspondence of musician, writer, and photographer Max Ewing (1904-34). Born into a wealthy family in Pioneer, Ohio, Ewing was doted on by his parents, who encouraged his interests in the arts and accepted his sexuality. When he moved to New York in 1923, they supported him with an allowance of $3,000 a year, ample funds for an apartment, piano lessons with an eminent teacher, and an energetic social life. His circle of friends grew to include a host of well-known writers and artists, many of whom he met through Carl Van Vechten, whose works Ewing had long admired and who became his mentor, and writer, activist, and arts doyenne Muriel Draper, for whom Ewing became escort, confidant, and constant companion. At her salons and parties, he met luminaries such as Lincoln Kirstein and Walker Evans, George Gershwin and Noel Coward. Van Vechten, who championed avant-garde and African American arts, was especially significant in Ewing’s involvement in queer culture; after Ewing drowned himself in 1934, Van Vechten gathered and donated his papers to Yale’s Beinecke Library. Friedman charts Ewing’s career as he morphed from performer and pianist to sculptor and photographer; she reports on his friends, lovers, and artistic collaborators in the U.S. and abroad and recounts his lonely, troubled last years. Profusely illustrated with artwork, memorabilia, and photographs—many from the Gallery of Extraordinary Portraits that Ewing created in his walk-in closet and his Carnival of Venice photography project—Friedman’s appreciative biography vividly conveys the spirited ambience of the interracial, international community of queer outsiders and intellectuals among whom, for his short life, Ewing thrived.

A richly detailed cultural history.