Mina Loy
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Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and
bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, originally practised by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers. * Bohemian style, a ...
. She was one of the last of the first-generation
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
s to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by
T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
,
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
,
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
,
Basil Bunting Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditi ...
,
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
,
Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typography, typographist closely associated with Dada. When consid ...
, and
Yvor Winters Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic. Life Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and Pasadena, where his grandparents ...
, among others.


Biography


Early life and education

Loy was born in Hampstead, London. She was the daughter of a Hungarian
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
tailor, Sigmund Felix Löwy, who had moved to London to evade persistent
antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
in Budapest, and an English Protestant mother, Julia Bryan.Burke (1997), p. 17. Loy reflected on their relationship, and the production of her identity, in great detail in her mock-epic ''Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose'' (1923–1925). The marriage of Löwy and Bryan was fraught. Unknown to Loy, as biographer Carolyn Burke records, her mother married her father under the pressure of disgrace as she was already seven months pregnant with the child that would be Mina; this situation was mirrored later in Loy's life when she rushed into a marriage with Stephen Haweis after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Löwy and Bryan had three daughters in total, with Mina being the oldest. In much of her poetry and writing, Loy describes her mother as overbearingly Evangelical Victorian. As Burke records: "Like most Evangelicals, for whom the imagination was a source of sin, Julia distrusted her child's ability to invent." In reference to her mother, Loy recalled that she was troubled by the fact of "the very author of my being, being author of my fear." Loy found it hard to identify with her mother, who not only punished her continually for her "sinfulness," but also espoused fervent support of the British Empire, rampant antisemitism (which included her husband), and nationalistic jingoism. Loy's formal art education began late in 1897 at St. John's Wood School where she remained for about two years. She later called it "the worst art school in London" and "a haven of disappointment". Loy's father pushed for her to go to the art school in the hope that it would make her more marriageable. Around this time, Loy became fascinated with both
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( ; ), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brother ...
and
Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romanticism, romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well k ...
, and after much convincing was able to persuade her father to purchase her
Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
's ''Complete Works'' and reproductions of his paintings as well as a red Moroccan leather-bound version of Christina's poems.Burke (1997), p. 40. She also became passionate about the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the work of
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...
and later turning to
Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August 183317 June 1898) was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. Burne-Jones worked with William Morris as a founding part ...
(her favourite work of which, at the time, was '' Love Among the Ruins''). Loy had to be careful as to how she expressed herself due to her mother's control. For example, Loy described that when her mother found a drawing she had done of the naked Andromeda bound to a rock her mother, scandalised and disgusted, tore up the work and called her daughter "a vicious slut".


Studies in Germany and Paris

In 1900 Loy attended the Munich ''Künstlerinnenverein'', or the Society of Female Artists' School, which was connected with the fine art school of
Munich University The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
, it was there that she claimed she learned draughtsmanship. Upon returning from the relative freedom she found in Munich to the stifling environment of her family home in London, Loy suffered from "headaches, respiratory problems, and generalized weakness" which was then diagnosed as
neurasthenia Neurasthenia ( and () 'weak') is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist Georg ...
– "a catch-all term for a variety of psychosomatic complaints suffered by artistic or intellectual women and a few sensitive men" during that time period. Around the age of eighteen, Loy convinced her parents to allow her to continue her education in Paris with a chaperone – a woman called Mrs. Knight. After much persuasion, she was allowed to move to
Montparnasse Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split betwee ...
, which in 1902 had not yet been urbanised, and attend the Académie Colarossi as an art student. Unlike the segregated classes at the Munich ''Künstlerinnenverein'', these art classes were mixed. It was here, through an English friend of a similar social standing named Madeline Boles, that Loy first came into contact with the English painter Stephen Haweis who Loy later described as enacting the "parasitic drawing-out of one's vitality to recharge, as it were, his own deficient battery of life."Burke (1997), p. 81. According to Burke's biography, Haweis was unpopular with his fellow students, being considered a "poseur," and Boles in particular took him under her wing. Haweis, whose father was the well-known Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis and his mother Mary Eliza Haweis, a writer who wrote, amongst other things, ''Chaucer for Children'': ''A Golden Key'', was an aesthete of sorts and "despite being very short he managed to condescend to his listeners from a height." He began to exert himself over Loy, recognising her beauty and desirability, and played the role of the misunderstood eccentric which led Loy to feel guilty for disliking him and distrusting him as he borrowed more and more money from her without paying her back. Later she would reflect that Haweis loomed over her and she became, in Loy's own words, "as sullenly involved as with my mother's sadistic hysterics." One night he convinced her to stay over and, in what she would later describe as a state of hypnosis, she was seduced by him. Waking up next morning in his bed, semi-naked, Loy was horrified and repulsed. A few months after this, she realised that she was pregnant, something which terrified her as it bound her, as she later described, even closer to "the being on earth whom she would have least chosen." Being only twenty-one, she faced a difficult situation and, fearing rejection from her family and disinheritance, which would leave her penniless, she sought her parents' approval to marry Haweis, which they agreed to due to his respectable social status as the son of a preacher. Reflecting on this in later life, and how her upbringing influenced her in the decisions she made, Loy remarked that "If anyone I disliked insisted upon my doing anything I was averse to I would automatically comply, so systematically had they obfuscated my instinct of self-preservation."


Paris, 1903–1906

Relocating to Paris, Haweis and Loy married there, in the 14th Arrondissement, on 13 December 1903 – Loy was twenty-one, and four months pregnant. Initially they agreed that it would be just a marriage of convenience, but Stephen became quickly more possessive and demanding. Instead of taking her husband's name, after their marriage she changed her last name from "Lowy" to "Loy." ''Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy'' (1996) biographer Carolyn Burke notes that " e anagrammatic shifts of Lowy into Loy and later Lloyd symbolize her attempts to resolve personal crises and chooses to refer to Loy as Mina – the name that stayed fixed as her surname varied."Burke (1997), p. 13. Starting in 1903 until 1904, after meeting the Englishman Henry Coles, Haweis began selling ''photographies d'art'', or fine art photography pieces, influenced by
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...
style. The most notable commission of this time was the photographing of the recent works of
Auguste Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (; ; 12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a u ...
which came about after Haweis met with Rodin himself.Burke (1997), pp. 90-92. At that time, Loy was Haweis's favourite subject to photograph; this is something which Loy never commented on. As Haweis gained more contacts and work, Loy became increasingly isolated and heavily pregnant. Loy's first child, Oda, was born on 27 May 1903. The labour was hard, as recalled in the early poem "Parturition" (first published in ''The Trend'' 8:1, October 1914). The opening details:
I am the centre Of a circle of pain Exceeding its boundaries in every direction The business of the bland sun Has no affair with me In my congested cosmos of agony From which there is no escape ..ref name=":5" />
Whilst Loy was in labour through the night, Haweis was absent with his mistress. Loy records this in "Parturition" thus:
The irresponsibility of the male Leaves woman her superior Inferiority. He is running upstairs
Two days after her first birthday, Oda died of meningitis and Loy was left completely bereft with grief over the loss. A day or so after Oda's death Loy reportedly painted a (now lost) tempera painting ''The Wooden Mother'' in which she depicted two mothers with their children, one being a "foolish-looking mother holding her baby, whose small fingers are raised in an impotent blessing over the other anguished mother who, on her knees, curses them both with great, upraised, clenched fists, and her own baby sprawling dead with little arms and legs outstretched lifeless." Loy decided to enter the Salon d'Automne under the name "Mina Loy" (having dropped the "w" in Lowy) in 1905. That autumn she exhibited six watercolours and the following spring she exhibited two watercolours at the Salon des Beaux-Art of 1906. After the latter exhibition, Loy was written of favourably in the ''Gazette des Beaux-Arts'':
Mlle Mina Loy who, in her uncommon watercolours where Guys, Rops and Beardsley are combined shows us ambiguous ephebes whose nudity is caressed by ladies dressed in furbelows of 1855.
After this positive reception Loy was asked to become a ''sociétaire'' of the drawing category, which meant that her work could be exhibited without having to pass through a selection committee. This was a "vote of confidence" which, as biographer Burke recognises, "was an exceptional mark of recognition for an unknown Englishwoman of twenty-three". By 1906 Loy and Haweis had agreed to live separately. During this period of separation Loy was treated by a French doctor named Henry Joël le Savoureux for neurasthenia, which had worsened with the death of Oda and living with Haweis, and the pair embarked on an affair which would end with her becoming pregnant. This made Haweis jealous and precipitated their move to Florence, where there were fewer people who knew them.


Florence, 1906–1916

At first, Loy and Haweis moved into a ''villino'' located in Arcetri, finding themselves in a large expatriate community. In the Spring of 1907 Haweis found a studio on the Costa San Giorgio in Oltrarno. On 20 July 1907, Loy gave birth to Joella Sinara. A few months before Joella's first birthday Loy was pregnant again, this time with the child of Haweis, and she was to give birth to a son named John Stephen Giles Musgrove Haweis on 1 February 1909. Joella was late learning to walk, which was later diagnosed as a type of infantile paralysis which caused her muscles to atrophy. Dreading that Joella's condition might be like the meningitis that killed Oda, Loy sought medical and spiritual support. This was one of her earliest, critical encounters with
Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes in ...
as she sought out a practitioner, who prescribed a treatment and told Loy to feed Joella beef broth and donkey's milk. After this succeeded in improving Joella's health, Loy began to attend church regularly.Burke (1997), p. 117. Around 1909, with the financial support of Loy's father, Loy and Haweis moved into a three-storey home on the Costa San Giorgio. The family had a nurse, Giulia, who helped raise the children and would later spend years being the children's sole support, and her sister Estere, who was the family cook. Once the children were toddlers, Loy spent increasingly less time with them and they were often cared for in the cooler climate of the mountains and Forte de Marmi in the summers. Burke speculates that this may have been a reaction to the overbearing intrusion of her own mother which led her to withdraw. Loy frequented the social gatherings held by socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan at the Villa Curonia and it was here that she met
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
, her brother Leo Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. Loy was drawn to Gertrude and even got the opportunity to dine with her, Dodge, and Andre Gide. Gertrude would later recall that Loy, as well as Haweis, were amongst the few at that time who expressed serious interest in her work (she had not yet been widely recognised for her literary achievement). However, Gertrude recalls an incident where Haweis begged her to add two commas in exchange for a painting, which she did, but then later removed them; contrarily, Gertrude noted that "Mina Loy equally interested was able to understand without the commas. She has always been able to understand." In daughter Joella (née Sinara) Bayer's memoir, now part of the Mina Loy Estate, she reflected on her parents, saying:
My mother, tall, willowy, extraordinarily beautiful, very talented, undisciplined, a free spirit, with the beginning of too strong an ego; my father, short, dark, a mediocre painter, bad tempered, with charming social manners and endless conversation about the importance of his family.
According to Gillian Hanscombe and Virginia L. Smyers:
During their ten years in Florence, both Mina and Haweis took lovers and developed their separate lives. In 1913 and 1914, though she was coping with motherhood, a soured marriage, lovers, and her own artistic aspirations, Mina found time to notice and take part in the emerging Italian Futurist movement, led by Filippo Marinetti, whom Loy had a brief affair with, and to read Stein's manuscript: ''The Making of Americans''. Loy even showed some of her own art at the first Free Futurist International Exhibition in Rome. She became, also, at this time, a lifelong convert to
Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes in ...
.
In winter 1913, at Caffe Giubbe Rosse (an informal meeting place of those involved in
Giovanni Papini Giovanni Papini (9 January 18818 July 1956) was an Italian journalist, essayist, novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and Italian philosophy, philosopher. A controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century, he ...
's '' Lacerba)'' Loy's lodger friend and fellow artist, the American Frances Simpson Stevens, met Florentine artists Carlo Carrà and Ardengo Soffici, who, with Papini, had joined forces with Marinetti's Futurists earlier that year. They soon began visiting Stevens on the Costa San Giorgio and through this connection Stevens and Loy met many other Italian artists. Soffici would later invite Loy and Stevens to exhibit their work in the First Free Futurist International Exhibition, to be held in Rome at the Sprovieri Gallery – Loy was the only artist representing Britain and Stevens the only North American. From 1914 until her departure for America in 1916, Loy was involved in a complicated love triangle between Papini and Marinetti – which she was to write about extensively in her poetry. In 1914, while living in an expatriate community in Florence, Italy, Loy wrote her '' Feminist Manifesto''. A galvanising polemic against the subordinate position of women in society, the short text remained unpublished in Loy's lifetime.


New York, 1916

Disillusioned with the macho and destructive elements in
Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...
, as well as craving independence and participation in a modernist art community, Loy left her children, and moved to New York in winter 1916. Before arriving in New York Loy had already created a stir – most notably with the 1915 publication of her ''Love Songs'' in the first edition of '' Others.'' She became a key figure in the group that formed around ''Others'' magazine, which also included
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
,
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
,
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
, and
Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernism, modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1968 Nobel Prize in Li ...
. Loy soon became a well-known member of the
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
bohemian circuit. Frances Stevens, who had stayed with Loy previously in Florence, helped Loy get a small apartment on West Fifty-seventh Street. Within days of being in New York Stevens took Loy to an evening gathering at Walter and Louise Arensberg's 33 West Sixty-seventh Street duplex apartment. As Loy's biographer Carolyn Burke describes:
'On any given evening the Arensbergs’ guests might include Duchamp’s friends from Paris: the painters
Albert Gleizes Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...
; his wife, Juliette Roche; Jean and Yvonne Crotti; and
Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typography, typographist closely associated with Dada. When consid ...
, as well as his wife, Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia; the composer
Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; h ...
; and the novelist and diplomat Henri-Pierre Roché. The new figures in American art and letters were also represented: at various times the salon attracted the artists
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
,
Beatrice Wood Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Dada movement in the United States; she founded and edited '' The Blind Man'' and '' Rongwrong'' magazines in New York City with French ...
,
Charles Sheeler Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionism, Precisionist paintings, commercial photographer, commercial photography, and the 1921 avant-garde film, ''Manhatta'', which he made in collaboratio ...
, Katherine Dreier, Charles Demuth, Clara Tice, and Frances Stevens, as well as poets
Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, Alfred Kreymborg,
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
, writers Allen and Louise Norton and Bob Brown, and art critic Henry McBride. And then there was the Baroness
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; 12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displa ...
– artist’s model, poet, and ultra-eccentric.'
Early in 1917, Loy starred alongside William Carlos Williams, as wife and husband, in Alfred Kreymborg's one act play ''Lima Beans'' produced by the Provincetown Players. Loy contributed a (since lost) painting entitled ''Making Lampshades'' to the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (formed in December 1916) at the Grand Central Palace New York which opened on 10 April 1917. With Walter Arensberg acting as the director and
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
as the head of the hanging committee, the show broke new ground in America as they ran with the slogan 'No jury, no prizes' as well as flouting tradition by displaying art works alphabetically, with no regard to reputation, and allowing anyone to enter for the price of $6. In 1917 she met the "poet-boxer" Arthur Cravan, a nephew of
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
's wife,
Constance Lloyd Constance Mary Wilde (; 2 January 18587 April 1898) was an Irish writer. She was the wife of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the mother of their two sons, Cyril Holland, Cyril and Vyvyan Holland, Vyvyan. Early life and marriage The daughter ...
. Cravan fled to Mexico to avoid the draft; when Loy's divorce was final she followed him, and they married in Mexico City in 1918. Here they lived in poverty and years later, Loy would write of their destitution. When she found out that she was pregnant, she travelled on a hospital ship to
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
, "where she intended to wait for Cravan, but Cravan never appeared, nor was he ever seen again". Reportedly, "Cravan disappeared while testing a boat he planned to escape in. He was presumed drowned, but reported sightings continued to haunt Loy for the rest of her life." Cravan was lost at sea without trace; although some mistakenly claim that his body was found later in the desert (post-mortem, his life acquired even more epic proportions and dozens of stories proliferated). The tale of Cravan's disappearance is strongly anecdotal, as recounted by Loy's biographer, Carolyn Burke. Their daughter, Fabienne, was born in April 1919 in England. In a chapter of her largely unpublished memoir entitled ''Colossus'', Loy writes about her relationship with Cravan, who was introduced to her as "the prizefighter who writes poetry." Irene Gammel argues that their relationship was "located at the heart of
avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
activities hich included boxing and poetry" Loy draws on the language of boxing throughout her memoir to define the terms of her relationship with Cravan.


Return to Europe and New York

After Cravan's death/disappearance, Loy travelled back to England, where she gave birth to her daughter, Fabienne. Loy would return to Florence and her other children. However, in 1916 she moved to New York, arriving on 15 October on the ship ''Duca D 'Aosta'', which set sail from the port of Naples. While in New York, she worked in a lamp-shade studio, as well as acting in the Provincetown Theater. Here she returned to her old Greenwich Village life, engaging in theatre or mixing with her fellow writers. During this period, some of Loy's poems ended up in small magazines such as ''Little Review'' and ''Dial''. She would mingle and develop friendships with the likes of
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
, Dadaist
Tristan Tzara Tristan Tzara (; ; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, c ...
, and Jane Heap. Loy contributed writing to
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
's two editions of the journal '' The Blind Man''. Appearing to be somewhat mystified by the new kinds of poetry being produced by Loy and her ilk, Pound remarked in a March 1918 piece for ''Little Review'', "In the verse of
Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernism, modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1968 Nobel Prize in Li ...
I detect traces of emotion; in that of Mina Loy I detect no emotion whatsoever", seeing them both as demonstrating logopoeia, the writing of poetry without caring for its music or imagism. Instead, in their poetry, they performed "a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas and modification of ideas and characters." Pound concludes, "The point of my praise, for I intend this as praise...is that without any pretences and without clamours about nationality, these girls have written a distinctly national product, they have written something which would not have come out of any other country, and (while I have before now seen a great deal of rubbish by both of them) they are, as selected by Mr. Kreymborg, interesting and readable (by me...)." Loy travelled back to Florence, then New York, then back to Florence, "provoked by the news that Haweis had moved with Giles to the Caribbean". She brought her daughters to Berlin to enrol her daughter in dance school, but left them once more because she was drawn back to Paris by the art and literature scene. In 1923, she returned to Paris. Her first volume of poetry, ''Lunar Baedecker'', a collection of thirty-one poems, was published this year and was mistakenly printed with the spelling error "Baedecker" rather than the intended "Baedeker".


Lamp-designing

In 1936, Loy returned to New York and lived for a time with her daughter in
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
. She moved to the
Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighbourhood, neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row (Manhattan), Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th ...
, where she found inspiration for poems and
found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...
assemblage art in the destitute people she encountered. On 15 April 1946, she became a naturalised citizen of the United States under the name "Gertrude Mina Lloyd", resident at 302 East 66 Street in New York City. Her second and last book, ''Lunar Baedeker & Time Tables'', appeared in 1958. In 1953, Loy moved to
Aspen, Colorado Aspen is the List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population ...
, where her daughters were already living; Joella, who had been married to the art dealer of Surrealism in New York, Julien Levy, next married the
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
artist and typographer
Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the ...
. She exhibited her
found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...
art constructions in New York in 1951 and at the
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary art, contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. ...
in 1959 in a show entitled 'Constructions' but she did not personally attend it.


Death

Loy continued to write and work on her assemblages until her death at the age of 83, on 25 September 1966 from pneumonia in Aspen, Colorado. Loy is buried in Aspen Grove Cemetery.


Children

Loy had four children; her children by Haweis were Oda Janet Haweis (1903–1904), Joella Synara Haweis Levy Bayer (1907–2004) and John Giles Stephen Musgrove Haweis (1909–1923). Her only child with Cravan was Jemima Fabienne Cravan Benedict (1919–1997). Both Oda and John Giles died prematurely—Oda at the age of one year and John Giles at fourteen. Giles, whose father Stephen Haweis picked him up from Florence in Loy's absence and took Giles without her consent to the Caribbean, died of a rare cancerous growth at the age of fourteen having never been reunited with his mother. According to Loy biographer Burke, the loss of Giles, following as it did upon the disappearance or death of Cravan, precipitated struggles with her mental health. As a result, Loy’s daughter Joella often had to care for her and prevent her from self-harming.


Published works

Loy is described as a "brilliant literary enigma" by Rachel Potter and Suzanne Hobson, who outline a chronological map of her geographical and literary shifts. Loy's poetry was published in several magazines before being published in book form. The magazines that she was featured in include '' Camera Work'', ''Trend'', ''Rogue, Little Review'', and ''Dial''. Loy had two volumes of her poetry published in her lifetime: ''The Lunar Baedeker'' (1923) and ''The Lunar Baedeker & Time-tables'' (1958). The ''Lunar Baedeker'' included her most famous work, "Love Songs", in a shortened version. It also included four poems included in ''Others'' in 1915, but their sexual explicitness had provoked a violent reaction, which made it difficult to publish the rest. Posthumously, two updated volumes of her poetry were released, ''The Last Lunar Baedeker'' (Highlands, NC, Jargon Society, 1982) and ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker'' (New York, Farrar Straus Girous, 1996 and Manchester, Carcanet, 1997), both edited by Roger L. Conover. The 1997 edition omits Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose, a sequence of 21 poems, part semi-autobiographical, part social satire, arguably Loy's most accomplished work - which, as a result of this omission, remains out of print. Songs to Joannes is in both editions. Her only novel, ''Insel'', was published posthumously in 1991. It is about the relationship between a German artist, Insel, and an art dealer, Mrs. Jones. Some critics have suggested that the novel is based on Loy's relationship with Richard Oelze. However, Sandeep Parmar has said that it is actually about Loy's relationship with her creative self.


Poetry books

* ''Lunar Baedeker'' (Paris: Contact Publishing Co.,1923) * ''Lunar Baedeker and Time-Tables'' (Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams Publisher
argon 23 Argon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as abund ...
1958) * ''The Last Lunar Baedeker'', Roger Conover ed. (Highlands: Jargon Society argon 53 1982) * ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker'', Roger Conover ed. (Carcanet: Manchester, 1997)


Published prose

* ''Insel'', Elizabeth Arnold ed. (Black Sparrow Press, 1991) * ''Stories and Essays'', Sara Crangle ed. (Dalkey Press Archive ritish Literature Series 2011)


Critical exhibitions

* Salon d'Automne (Paris, 1905) – six watercolours *Salon des Beaux Arts (Paris, 1906) – two watercolours * First Free Futurist International Exhibition (Rome, 1914) * The New York Society of Independent Artists (Inaugural exhibition, 1917) * ''Constructions'' at
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary art, contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. ...
, New York (April 14 – 25th 1959; her only solo show until 2023) * ''Mina Loy: Strangeness is Inevitable'' at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine (April 6, 2023 - September 17, 2023; the first monographic presentation of the art of Mina Loy)


Legacy

Loy's name may have been an inspiration for the stage name of actress
Myrna Loy Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television and stage actress. As a performer, she was known for her ability to adapt to her screen partner's acting style. Born in Helena, Monta ...
(born Myrna Williams); the idea apparently came from screenwriter Peter Ruric, also known as crime novelist Paul Cain. Recently in Argentina Camila Evia has translated and prepared an edition that includes the Feminist Manifesto and many poems by Mina Loy, making her legacy known in depth throughout Latin America. Nicholas Fox Weber wrote in the ''New York Times'' that "Mina Loy may never be more than a vaguely familiar name, a passing satellite, but at least she sparkled from an orbit of her own choosing."


Notes


References

* Burke, Carolyn. ''Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. * Gammel, Irene.
Lacing up the Gloves: Women, Boxing and Modernity
" ''Cultural and Social History'' 9.3 (2012): 369–390. *Gross, Jennifer R., Dawn Ades, Roger L. Conover, and Ann Lauterbach. Mina Loy: Strangeness is inevitable. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. *Kouidis, Virginia. ''Mina Loy: American Modernist Poet''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980. *Kuenzli, Rudolf. ''Dada (Themes and Movements)''. Phaidon Press, 2006. ncludes poetry by Mina and her relationship to several artists.*Loy, Mina. ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker''. Selected and ed. Roger Conover. 1996. *–––, and Julien Levy. ''Constructions, 14–25 April 1959''. New York:
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary art, contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. ...
, 1959
OCLC 11251843
olo exhibition catalogue with commentary.*Lusty, Natalya.
'Sexing the Manifesto: Mina Loy, Feminism and Futurism'
, ''Women: A Cultural Review'', 19:3, pp. 245–260. 2008. *Parmar, Sandeep (2013). Reading Mina Loy's Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman. London: Bloomsbury Academic. *Prescott, Tara. A Lyric Elixir': The Search for Identity in the Works of Mina Loy'', Claremont Colleges, 2010. *Shreiber, Maeera, and Keith Tuma, eds. ''Mina Loy: Woman and Poet''. National Poetry Foundation, 1998. ollection of essays on Mina Loy's poetry, with 1965 interview and bibliography.*Parisi, Joseph. ''100 Essential Modern Poems by Women'' (The greatest poems written in English by women over the past 150 years, memorable masterpieces to read, reread, and enjoy). Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008.


External links


Mina Loy
at Electronic Poetry Center
Works by or about Mina Loy
at
HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. Its holdings include content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digit ...

Works by or about Mina Loy
at
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

Works by or about Mina Loy
at
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*
Vorticist Portraiture in Mina Loy's ''Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose''
in ''Cordite Poetry Review''



– photographs, works, bibliography, and links
Mina Loy at the Modernist Journals Project
– examples of visual art *

' and

', ''Intimate Circles: American Women in the Arts'',
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts and ...
,
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, accessed 30 January 2008.
Mina Loy, "The Sacred Prostitute"
(in Spanish). Función Lenguaje.
''Mina Loy's 'Colossus' and the Myth of Arthur Cravan'' by Sandeep Parmar, Jacket 34, October 2007
* Mina Loy Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Loy, Mina Modernist women writers 1882 births 1966 deaths Artists from the London Borough of Camden British Army personnel of World War I British expatriates in Mexico British feminist artists British women collage artists Converts to Christian Science English Christian Scientists English expatriates in France English expatriates in Germany English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in the United States English feminist writers English people of Hungarian-Jewish descent English women artists English women poets British futurologists People from Hampstead Proponents of Christian feminism Writers from the London Borough of Camden 20th-century English poets 20th-century English women writers