Carl Van Vechten

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Image:Carl Van Vechten.jpg 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 the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1906, he moved to New York City. He worked as a journalist. After an earlier, unsuccessful marriage, Van Vechten 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, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Marc Chagall, Horst P. Horst, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Truman Capote and Billie Holiday.

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of Stein's life, and at her death she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor; he helped to bring into print her unpublished writings.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. Most of Van Vechten's papers are held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

Although Van Vechten was married to Fania Marinoff through the end of his life, he was homosexual. 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, which is currently out of print but widely available from used booksellers.

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 (1925)
• Excavations (1926)
• Nigger Heaven (1926)
• Spider Boy (1928)
• Parties (1930)
• Feathers (1930)
• Sacred and Profane Memories (1932)
• Hughes, Langston; Van Vechten, Carl; Bernard, Emily (Ed.) (2001) Remember Me to Harlem : The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0679451137
• Van Vechten, Carl; & Kellner, Bruce (Ed.) (2003). The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922-1930. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02848-1

Books about Van Vechten

• Kellner, Bruce (1968). Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806108088
• Kellner, Bruce (Ed.) (1980). A Bibliography of the Work of Carl Van Vechten. Westport: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-20767-4
• Kellner, Bruce (Ed.) (1987). Letters of Carl Van Vechten. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300039077
• Smalls, James (2006). The Homoerotic Photography of Carl Van Vechten: Public Face, Private Thoughts. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.[1] ISBN 1-59213-305-3

External links

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• Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten at the Library of Congress features a searchable database of photographs taken by Van Vechten.
• Harlem Renaissance - Carl Van Vechten: Webpage with bibliography of books and articles by and about Van Vechten.
• Extravagant Crowd: Carl Van Vechten's Portraits of Women
• Yale May Not Think So, But It'll Be Just Jolly: pages from Van Vechten's scrapbooks from the exhibit The Pink and The Blue: Lesbian and Gay Life at Yale and in Connecticut, 1642-2004de:Carl van Vechten

fr:Carl van Vechten it:Carl Van Vechten ja:カール・ヴァン・ヴェクテン pl:Carl van Vechten pt:Carl van Vechten