Later, Laughlin took a leave of absence from Harvard and stayed with Pound in Rapallo for several months. Why don't you take up something useful?" Pound suggested publishing. He proceeded to Italy to meet and study with Ezra Pound, who famously told him, "You're never going to be any good as a poet. Laughlin accompanied the two on a motoring tour of southern France and wrote press releases for Stein's upcoming visit to the U.S. In 1934, Laughlin traveled to France, where he met Gertrude Stein and Alice B. According to Laughlin, Hillyer would leave the room when either Pound or Eliot was mentioned. Harvard University, where Laughlin matriculated in 1933, had a more conservative literary bent, embodied in the poet and professor Robert Hillyer, who directed the writing program. An important influence on Laughlin at the time was the Choate teacher and translator Dudley Fitts, who later provided Laughlin with introductions to prominent writers such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. I bless them with every breath." Laughlin's boyhood home is now part of the campus of Chatham University.Īt The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, Laughlin showed an early interest in literature. As Laughlin once wrote, "none of this would have been possible without the industry of my ancestors, the canny Irishmen who immigrated in 1824 from County Down to Pittsburgh, where they built up what became the fourth largest steel company in the country. Laughlin, and this wealth would partially fund Laughlin's future endeavors in publishing. Laughlin's family had made its fortune with the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, founded three generations earlier by his great grandfather, James H. He was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Mina Loy’s 1933 Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery & her unexhibited 1930s Paintings.James Laughlin (Octo– November 12, 1997) was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing.In 1931 Loy began to serve as the Paris agent for the innovative Julien Levy Gallery (1931-1949), which not only held the first Surrealist exhibition in New York in January 1932, but throughout the 1930s and 1940s served as the premier American gallery for Surrealist work of all kinds. The story of how this came to pass involves the trans-Atlantic circuit of art and artists that characterized Loy’s career.ĭuchamp - like Loy, a pivotal figure in the trans-Atlantic migration of Surrealism - played a key role in introducing Loy to Julien Levy. Loy’s poem “Brancusi’s Golden Bird,” originally published in The Dial 73 (November 1922) and republished in Lunar Baedecker (1923), had accompanied the 1926 exhibition of Bird in Space at the Brummer Gallery in New York (Januzzi, “Bibliography” 523).ĭuchamp met Julien Levy in New York when Duchamp learned that Levy’s father Edgar had purchased Brancusi’s Bird in Space. With Duchamp and Robert McAlmon, Julien Levy traveled to Paris in February 1927, where he met Mina Loy and her daughter Joella at a party at Peggy Guggenheim’s. Levy married Joella in August 1927 and remained entranced by his mother-in-law’s beauty and artistic gifts he would help to promote Loy’s poetry and visual art through the remainder of her career (Burke 346, Burke “Loy-alism” 62). With Julien and Edgar Levy’s financial help, Loy was able to buy out Peggy Guggenheim’s share of her lampshade shop in 1928, and then to sell it in 1930, permitting more time for her writing and art. Levy opened his New York gallery in November 1931 and arranged for Loy to become his Paris representative, which “justified the monthly ‘allowance'” that he sent to her (Burke 377).Īs the agent in Paris who arranged the purchase and transportation of Surrealist art to Levy’s Gallery from 1931-36, Mina Loy was a central figure in European Surrealism’s trans-Atlantic career and reception in the United States. In Paris, Loy negotiated acquisitions with the Bermans, Giacometti, Tchelitchew, De Chirico, and Massimo Campigli, and commissioned work from Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Magritte she also worked with Pierre Colle and Leonce Rosenberg who had galleries showing Surrealist work in Paris. After viewing Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’Ôr in 1932 with Julien Levy and Lee Miller, Loy encouraged and helped to arrange the film’s premiere in New York (Burke 378-9 Schaffner, “Alchemy” 37). Loy’s dealings with the German surrealist painter Richard Oelze in 1935-6 would inspire her novel Insel, which chronicles the relationship between Mrs. Jones, a character based on Loy’s role as Levy’s Paris agent, and Insel, based on Oelze.
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