![]() Asked later if she had been one of Morgan’s many mistresses, Greene would laugh and say, “We tried.”įeted for her professional acumen, wit, and style, Belle Da Costa Greene lived a life of self-invention, propelled by drive and audacity. Morgan hired her as a librarian, in which role she not only oversaw and curated his burgeoning collection of antiquities but ran personal interference for and read aloud to “Big Chief,” as she called the Wall Street dynamo. Introduced by Junius, Greene, who was 26 but claimed to be 23, hit it off with the 64-year-old tycoon. Greene and the younger Morgan, both bibliophiles, worked at the Princeton University Library in New Jersey. ![]() Greene had entered Morgan’s orbit in 1905 through the banker’s nephew, Junius Morgan, an acquaintance from her job. She dressed and behaved flamboyantly-drinking and smoking, traveling solo, enjoying numerous suitors, and conducting an affair with a married man. He did not display the work until 1965, 15 years after Greene died.ĭuchamp was among a circle of artists and scholars acquainted with the green-eyed Greene, who for her time lived the fast life. The artist used the piece as an element on the cover of the only issue of the modernist magazine New York DADA, produced in collaboration with the versatile, innovative American artist Man Ray in 1921. Aficionados (see “Decoding Duchamp,” below) argue that in creating the work Duchamp was encoding references to his temporary patroness. Duchamp dyed the container green, perhaps an allusion to the Belle Da Costa Greene story as well as a play on her family name. The bottle originally held a Rigaud brand perfume, Un air embaumé, and was made of peach-colored glass. Irked and intrigued the artist, as she did so many others. ![]() Belle Da Costa Greene: The Black Activist's Daughter Who Reinvented Herself Across the Color Line Closeīelle Greene was 34 when she sat for this chalk portrait by artist Paul Helleu.
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