Everything about Carl Van Vechten totally explained
Carl Van Vechten (
June 17,
1880 –
December 21,
1964) was an
American writer and
photographer who was a patron of the
Harlem Renaissance and the
literary executor of
Gertrude Stein.
Biography
Born in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he graduated from
Washington High School in 1898, and later the
University of Chicago in
1903. In 1906, he moved to
New York City. He was hired as the assistant music critic at the
New York Times. His interest in opera had him take a
leave of absence from the paper in 1907, to travel to Europe to explore opera. While in England he married his long time friend from
Cedar Rapids, Anna Snyder. He returned to his job at the New York Times in 1909 and then became the first American critic of
modern dance. At that time,
Isadora Duncan,
Anna Pavlova, and
Loie Fuller were performing in
New York City. The marriage to Anna Snyder ended in divorce in 1912 and he wed actress
Fania Marinoff in 1914.
Several books of Van Vechten's essays on various subjects such as music and literature were published between 1915 and 1920. Between
1922 and
1930 Knopf published seven novels by Van Vechten, starting with
Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works and ending with
Parties.
Van Vechten was interested in black writers and artists, and knew and promoted many of the major figures of the
Harlem Renaissance, including
Langston Hughes,
Richard Wright, and
Wallace Thurman. Van Vechten's controversial novel
Nigger Heaven was published in
1926. An essay of his entitled "Negro Blues Singers" was published in
Vanity Fair in 1926.
In the 1930s, Van Vechten began taking portrait photographs. Among the many individuals he photographed were
Gertrude Stein,
George Schuyler,
Frida Kahlo,
Diego Rivera,
Henry Miller,
Anna May Wong,
Jane Bowles,
Mahalia Jackson,
W. Somerset Maugham,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Bessie Smith,
Paul Cadmus,
Marc Chagall,
Horst P. Horst,
Georgia O'Keeffe,
Gore Vidal,
Sidney Lumet,
James Stewart,
Marlon Brando,
Orson Welles,
Norman Mailer,
Evelyn Waugh,
Adele Addison,
Erskine Caldwell,
Ella Fitzgerald,
Alfred Stieglitz,
Truman Capote,
Billie Holiday,
Constance Collier,
Lin Yutang,
Cesar Romero,
Tallulah Bankhead and
Sir Laurence Olivier.
Van Vechten initially met
Gertrude Stein in
Paris in 1913. They continued corresponding for the remainder of Stein's life, and at her death she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor; he helped to bring into print her unpublished writings.
After the 1930s, Van Vechten published little writing, though he continued to write letters to many correspondents.
Although Van Vechten was married to
Fania Marinoff until the end of his life, he was either a homosexual or a bisexual. Some of his papers were kept under seal for 25 years after his death, and when they were examined after that time, they were found to include scrapbooks of photographs and clippings related to
homosexuality.
He died at the age of 84 in New York City. Van Vechten was the subject of a 1968 biography by Bruce Kellner,
Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades.
Archive
Most of Van Vechten's papers are held by the
Beinecke Library at
Yale University. The
Library of Congress acquired its collection of approximately 1,400 photographs in 1966 from Saul Mauriber.
Selected works
- Music After the Great War (1915)
- Music and Bad Manners (1916)
- Interpreters and Interpretations (1917)
- The Merry-Go-Round (1918)
- The Music of Spain (1918)
- In the Garret (1919)
- The Tiger in the House (1920)
- Lords of the Housetops (1921)
- Peter Whiffle (1922)
- The Blind Bow-Boy (1923)
- The Tattooed Countess (1924)
- Red (1925)
- Firecrackers. A Realistic Novel (1925)
- Excavations (1926)
- Nigger Heaven (1926)
- Spider Boy (1928)
- Parties (1930)
- Feathers (1930)
- Sacred and Profane Memories (1932)
Further Information
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