Synopses & Reviews
From the late 1920's through the early 1950's, photographer George Platt Lynes, painter Paul Cadmus, and critic Lincoln Kirstein helped to create and define the aesthetic and institutions of the American art world. With an overlapping circle of friends, lovers, collaborators, and models, Cadmus, Platt Lynes, and Kirstein created a world of gay esthetics and desire in art that was groundbreaking at the time and remarkable even today.
Through hours of conversation with surviving members of their circle as well as unprecedented access to papers, journals, and previously unreleased photographs, David Leddick has brought to vivid life the lives and loves, connections and interconnections, and the inspirations and influences of this now vanished art world. Meticulously researched, completely forthright, and lavishly illustrated, Intimate Companions is a celebration of the art, the lives, and the impact of this groundbreaking circle.
Review
Plunges us into that "queer" world that was New York artistic life in the late 1920s, 30s and 40s...A splendid study of what it is like to live an almost entirely unfettered private life.--
Washington PostA lively and sensitive collective biography that illuminates both their professional and private lives.--Booklist
Synopsis
Photographer George Platt Lynes, painter Paul Cadmus, and critic Lincoln Kirstein played a major role in creating the institutions of the American art world from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. The three created a remarkable world of gay aesthetics and desire in art with the help of their overlapping circle of friends, lovers, and collaborators.
Through hours of conversation with surviving members with their circle and unprecedented access to papers, journals, and previously unreleased photos, David Leddick has resurrected the influences of this now-vanished art world along with the lives and loves of all three artists in this groundbreaking biography.
About the Author
David Leddick is the author of novels
My Worst Date and
The Sex Squad, as well as two nonfiction books. He divides his time between Miami Beach and Paris.