The Artistic and Literary Circle of American Essayist and Art Patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996)

FAIN: FEL-257878-18

Angela L. Miller
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

Preparation of a book-length study of the New York artists and authors associated with critic and cultural figure Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) who resisted Abstract Expressionism during the mid-20th century.

Countermoderns: Reason and Magic in the Artistic and Literary Circle of Lincoln Kirstein is a history of the richly intertwined aesthetic, literary, social, and erotic worlds of a circle of gay and bisexual artists and writers in mid-20th century New York. Anchored by the central figure of Lincoln Kirstein—essayist, impresario, and patron of the arts—-my study reorients the still prevalent understanding of the ‘lavender scare’ of the 1950s. Bound by lifetime friendships, familial attachments with women, and romantic partnerships, the transatlantic Kirstein network realized a robustly queer alternative to the heteronormative nuclear family. Motivated by a countermodern vision of wholeness, they embraced the arts for their power to realize a new sense of community, shared aesthetic commitments, and a vision of cultural enlightenment pursued by others in these years. My study will expand our understanding of U.S. modernism by considering the culturally restorative functions of literary and artistic form in the context of a group study.