Romaine Brooks

All or Nothing A critical Study of Romaine Brooks moves along. I am 3/4  finished with  chapter 9. Brooks’s slow deterioration and withdrawal from the world culminates in the late 1960s. By 1967 she is in poor health, dealing with losing her eye sight and insanely jealous of Barney’s lover Janine Lahovary who she considered inferior and could not abide.  At first Janine realizing how much Natalie loved and needed Romaine tried to win her over. Failing in this she began to feel that Romaine taxed Natalie’s energies and wasn’t good for her health. Regardless, Nat Nat loved Romaine to distraction–even when Romaine was being a peevish bitch, throwing tanrums and acting like a brat. She would sulk over something she experienced as a slight and then ask Berthe (Natalie’s long time housekeeper) for chicken sandwiches like a small child. After the fits had passed the two old lovers, both in their 90s would speak in English and laugh together. But Romaine was not well and Natalie certainly was not after two heart attacks, ulcers which refused to heal on her legs, a bad hip and problems with her eyes that required wear dark blue glasses. Nonetheless, Natalie felt as long as her mind remained active she could tolerate anything and still love life. Romaine on the other hand hated the humiliations of old age and deteriorating health. She felt she had reached the end of the road and that it was all becoming futile. More and more she retreated seeing no one until in May of 1969 she refused to see Natalie or answer her letters. Natalie sent Berthe to speak with Romaine and Romaine told her in no uncertain terms that she and Natalie were quits and she did not want to see or hear from her. This was very hurtful to Natalie who only wanted to love and cherish Romaine which she did until her own death and beyond. Despite Janine’s jealousy she always obeyed Natalie’s smallest desire. So Natalie was buried with a picture of Romaine clutched to her breast.  She had come to believe if there was eternity that she would be reunited with her Romaine.

Romaine Brooks’s life is extraordinary as is her artistry. She was a tragic figure in that she could not rise above her childhood which was horrendous. The damage that she suffered at the hands of her mother, the ambivalent relationship with her crazy brother and the estrangement from her sister Maya all served to make her feel isolated, helpless and unprotected in the world as a child. It is along these emotional fault lines that we must view her life and her art. As a consequece her choices start to make sense once we enter her universe, however paranoid it may seem. She thought of herself as a martyr–but if we examine the Christian concept–Christ martyr, Saint Joan martyr, Saint Sabastian martyr what is she really sayiing? What sacrifices did she make for anyone? Rather her lapide-one who is stoned–is about the victim not the martyr, it is about suffering but not for the world or redemption as Jesus supposedly did. Rather her suffering is that of the outsider who is never acceptable and always suffers at the hands of the herd. As a consequence I would have to say that Brooks like many of her class and right wing conservatives in both Europe and America tended to look for scapegoats to project their own discomforts on. When I say this I am thinking of her identification with Italian Fascism with its faux science of race that claimed in 1937 that Italians were pure Aryans. It was during this period that they expelled foreign residents and blamed all their social ills on the Jews. Although Brooks’s writings are pretty much purged of blatant support for racial clensing these sentiments are evident between the lines and in her heroic portraits.

In chapter nine I will be discussing her life after the war as she traveled and tried to figure out how to live and how to rediscover her artist self. Astonishingly after a 16 year stint of not painting at the age of 87 she took up her brush again for one last great portrait. I will try to give readers insights into what this last incredible unfinished portrait attempted to do and how it relates to her work of 1905-1906. I will also address her two manuscripts attempting to decode her politics which she claimed no artist is interested in. Yet the personal is the political and her choices make that abundantly clear. Her failure to meet her own perfectionist standards finished her as an artist. However, she ws concerned about her legacy and with the help of Natalie and Laura Barney she set about placing her portraits in various collections in America, Italy and France. The bulk of her works went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1971 she had a major retrospective exhibition and another one in 2000 at the Woman’s Museum in Wshington, D.C. neither exhibit really dealt with what she called her “severe” art in s way that paid her justice. In All or Nothing  A critical study of Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) I have attempted to do justice to the complexity of boht her life and her art. In the United States she has reached clut status because of her lesbianism rather than her art. I feel this is  reduces her to her sexual orientation and I hope my book will correct this oversight. Many of the works that are illustrated have not been widely reproduced or seen in either France or the United States.

At this point I am working with a wonderful agent and will be able to update you on chapter 10 which discussed Brooks’s legacy and what it means now at a time of crisis when we are involved on at least 3 war fronts. I think we have much to learn from Romaine Brooks and her times.