Romaine Brooks

For those of you who have never seen a Romaine Brooks painting except in reproduction I can only say you have never seen a Brooks at all. I know this may sound extreme but until you understand what her “severe” aesthetic aspired to–the condition of music–you are simply missing her point. In trying to frame Romaine Brooks’s “legacy” in Chapter 10 of my book I found myself smack up against the challenge of how to explain how she did what she did as a painter. Her artistry, its modernity resides in her ambiguity. The complex set of relationships she created in her canvases, especially her more ambitious works, for instance, The White Bird are similar to Debussy’s hyperromantic and post-impressionist musical compositions. It should be noted that Brooks knew Debussy’s music well, sang it, played it on the piano and had been trained as a singer and musician before turning to painting. Continue Reading »