Romaine Brooks

I am happy to tell Brooks fans that I am coming to the end of Chapter six which deals with Romaine’s aesthetics. In this chapter I get into her sources, her vague references to her “servere” art and my theory of how she used her early training as a singer to inform her paintings. Prior to this very little attention has been focused on how Romaine Brooks actually created her incisive portraits.I am also working on an essay that goes into Romaine’s concept of the heroic feminine which will be published in 2009 in an anthology of writings dealing with queers and art.For those of you interested in other artists that I write about please go to the links listed on the site for updates. 

The American expatriate painter, Romaine Goddard Brooks (1874-1970) invented lesbian chic; her Self-Portrait (1923) is the epitome of elegance. Her silhouette suggests the streamlined angularity of the Art Deco era. Standing thin, erect and cool she is the ageless fashion statement. There is no contradiction between Romaine’s lesbian dandy and her patrician art. Long before HBO’s L Word and lesbian chic there was Romaine Brooks and her circle.Brooks lived as exquisitely and marvelously as she painted. Her life and art both validate the existence of the lesbian and gay communities at the time and perserved a stunning record for the future.The writer, Truman Capote claimed her success was in creating “the all time ultimate gallery of all the famous dykes from 1880 to 1935 or thereabouts,” but he saw only what he wanted to see.Cassandra Langer and Irene Javors All or Nothing: The Life and Times of Romaine Brooks shows how the artist was a hero of her own making living on a psychic St.Andreas fault line that she struggled to overcome. In this book Langer and Javors peel back the layers of this extraordinary artist’s purposefully created facade and reveals the truths about her relationship to the female hero, and her triumph in becoming herself.Cassandra Langer is an art historian and critic. She has co-authored two anthologies on Feminist Art Criticism and authored a Selected Bibliography of Feminist Art Criticism as well as a book on Mother and Child in Art. Her What’s Right With Feminism is available in paperback form at I-Universe.com. Langer has published nationally and internationally and has written many catalogues, critiques and reviews of American and contemporary art for such journals as Art Journal, Art Criticism, Art Papers, Arts magazine, G & L Review, Ms magazine, New Directions for Women, Woman’s Art Journal and others. Her op-ed pieces have appeared in New York Newsday and she is a frequent contributor to Midwest book reviews.com and Allaboutjazz.com. Irene Javors, M.ED. Diplomate APA, is a psychotherapist in Private Practice in NYC and the author of many articles and publications. She is an adjunct professor at Yeshiva University, NYC