Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy

by Deborah Rothschild (Editor), Calvin Tomkins (Introduction)

Paris in the 1920s art, literature, the Lost Generation. The glitterati who inhabited this legendary world F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, Man Ray, Dorothy Parker, and a host of others were members of an intimate circle centered around Sara and Gerald Murphy. "Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy "is a captivating and absorbing collection of essays examining through images and text the Murphys' influence on a remarkable constellation of artists. The book also explores Gerald Murphy's abbreviated career as a painter, his artistic legacy, and the complex nature of his motivation and vision. This beautifully illustrated volume features essays by art historian Deborah Rothschild and such Murphy scholars as Calvin Tomkins, Amanda Vaill, Linda Patterson Miller, Kenneth Silver; curators Dorothy Kosinski and Kenneth Wayne; artist/writer Trevor Winkfield; musicologist Olivia Mattis; and poet and author William Jay Smith.

Genres: Biography, Art

244 pages, ebook

First published July 28, 2007

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerald and Sara Murphy were a wealthy American couple who, with their three young children, moved to France in the 1920s. There they gathered around them an artistic community the members of which are now the stuff of legend. As the foreword to the book states:

When describing Sara and Gerald Murphy, the quality most frequently noted by both friends and biographers is their generosity of spirit. Their desire to share with the world the talents of the extraordinary circle of individuals whom they embraced seems truly inexhaustible. What is equally remarkable was the Murphys' ability to identify these individuals when their creative expression was on the cusp of making itself present, often in forms that were as yet uncharted territory. The Murphys had that rare capacity to recognize the new and to encourage it wholeheartedly and fearlessly. Being in their company ... meant being an active agent in making the world anew, that is to say, fully inhabiting the idealism that was all that came to be known as "the modern".

This book started life as the catelogue of an exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art in 2007. How I wish that I could travel back in time to see that exhibition. The 2013 me, fascinated as I am by all things Lost Generation, would have loved it.

Thankfully, reading this has consoled me for my inability to go back in time and space. A series of articles about various aspects of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, it's a wonderful adjunct to Amanda Vaill's biography Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story. The strictly biographical aspects of the Murphys' lives will be familiar to anyone who has read Vaill's work, but the more detailed and specialist discussion about, for example, Gerald Murphy's paintings, the couple's music collection and their involvement in theatre adds extra depth.

For readers interested in the period, the photographs in this book on their own make it worth tracking down. There are lots of them and, unlike those in Vaill's work the reproductions, they are of a very high quality. This is a book I expect to consult over and over again, as I continue with my Lost Generation reading project. Highly recommended to anyone who shares my fascination with the period.

[Caroline Barron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another in the array I have read on these wonderful friends of mine. Well, friends in the loosest sense...I've never met them but having read just about every book and article I can find on the Murphy's I feel I know them. I am dying to find a poster/print of any one of Gerald Murphy's paintings. Anyone know where to get one, or any other momento/piece of art by or about them? I wrote an essay on the Creative Process of Gerald Murphy, it was fulfilling being able to use all the knowledge I have about GM for uni. B+. Not bad.

[Annie Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always thought that Gerald Murphy was probably one of the best artists 20th century. This book that accompanies an exhibition of his surviving paintings by the Williams College Museum of Art is wonderful because it exposes Murphy's paintings and his life which were hidden in plain site.
The only reason I didn't give this five stars is because of the inclusion of "Gerald Murphy: Cubist Painter, Concrete Poet" by William Jay Smith. Smith made his essay all about himself.

This book also answers the questions that I had about Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast." It tells you who the "pilot fish" was. I have often wondered why Murphy meddled in the dissolution Hemingway's marriage to Hadley. I think he knew that Hemingway was going to leave Hadley anyway and he did admire his talent. As an assumed bisexual man, I think that Murphy would have liked to leave his family, too, and explore his talent as a painter. However, Gerald was unselfish, guilty and Catholic, albeit lapsed. He would never leave his family, so he gave up his painting as absolution for his son's illness. I found it amusing that Hemingway became a Catholic after becoming and adulterer and a deserter and then repeated the behavior in his next marriage. Who was the better man?

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some flaws in organization and design, gaps in what's included visually, nevertheless a scholarly, important, and enjoyable addition to the material available on the Murphys and their circle of important early 20th century figures. Info from various sources. Goes into excellent depth in unexpected places about Gerald's character and the sources of his art. Gives great insight on the groundbreaking movement of the time in the areas of art, music, and writing -- puts it all together beautifully.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating people who knew many other fascinating people...they were models for lead characters of Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night"

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Murphy's are fascinating and I can't get enough of them. This book has so many photographs, that's its value. Everybody Was So Young is the better biography but this one is chock full of pictures so I think it's a great companion piece.